Review: Small Mouth Sounds Asks Its Audience To Just Listen

The most important thing you’ll be needing at Queensland Theatre Company’s Small Mouth Sounds isn’t a program or a drink. It’s a pair of headphones.

That’s a sentence I never expected to write in a theatre review, but this is Bess Wohl’s play, and in this production, Queensland Theatre Company has decided to throw the norms out the stage door.

I honestly haven’t seen anything like it. The whole audience wears headphones from start to finish, and the cast hardly says a word.

It’s basically an experiment in 3D spatial audio, with the story coming through sound and movement, and a fair bit of guesswork from you. I spent the first ten minutes just working out what I was supposed to be doing, and then I stopped worrying about it.

The story is relatively simple. Five strangers and a couple arrive at a silent retreat in the woods, all hoping to fix something going wrong in their lives. Be it grief, a failing relationship, a stalled life or just that nagging sense that something isn’t quite right.

A teacher guides them, though she is never seen, and is also not without her own troubles. The rule is established before our cast arrive on stage: nobody is to talk. So, they eat, they meditate, they stumble through awkward group exercises, and they sneak away to be human in private.

Now and then someone cracks, and a few words slip out, and in a room this quiet they land like a dropped plate.

It is a play about what we find when we finally stop talking Photo by Stephen Henry

What’s Small Mouth Sounds really about? Probably the noise we fill our lives with to avoid ourselves. Strip away the chatter and the small talk, and what’s left is the stuff people have been dodging.

It’s a play about what we find when we finally stop talking. Most of us never stop long enough to find out.

Now on to the sound. Mike Willmett’s sound design is hard to put into words, which is a funny problem for a reviewer – especially in the context of this show. The 3D mapping places noises around your head with such precision that you catch yourself turning to look. A footstep passes behind you. Something rustles to your left. A voice drifts in from a place that clearly isn’t the stage.

The team went out to Lake Wivenhoe to record the splash of the characters jumping into the dam and even drove up to Maleny to capture real frogs croaking. You can tell. It sounds like standing in a Queensland evening with your eyes open and your phone in your pocket. I’ve heard plenty of sound design in my time, and I haven’t heard anything like this.

Isabel Hudson’s set matches it. The retreat’s lodges have two-way glass windows, and they’re a lovely choice. They add a small touch of magic, a sense that you’re peeking at private lives you probably shouldn’t be watching. It’s beautiful to look at, and it does real work in a show where there’s so little talking to lean on.

The set is practically a cast member Photo by Stephen Henry

Christine Felmingham’s lighting is practically a cast member. A rising light stands in for the sunrise and sunset, so you feel the days pass without a word of explanation.

Then night falls, the lights come on inside the lodges, and that’s when each character’s story starts to show itself. It’s clever, and it gives the audience something to follow in the absence of dialogue.

Then there’s the cast, who had a tough brief. Louise Brehmer, Stephen Geronimos, Judy Hainsworth, Keiran Law, Jodie Le Vesconte and Anthony Standish perform for 100 minutes with minimal dialogue and no intermission. That’s a tall order.

With almost nothing said aloud, their motives and inner lives are left open, and what each person is thinking is up to you. Two people in the audience could walk out with two completely different readings of the same character. Everything has to be carried by the body and the face, and they do it.

Barbara Lowing, the off-stage teacher, has the opposite job. She’s all voice, and she leads the audience through the evening on words and inflection alone. It’s a superb piece of work, and the headphones make it feel like she’s sitting right beside you.

Let’s be upfront: this isn’t a show for everyone. It’s slow by design, and it asks for patience. If you’re after a big musical with a big finish, this probably isn’t it. But if you’re curious, and you go in open-minded, you’ll get something you can’t get anywhere else in town.

Small Mouth Sounds is unique; it’ll make you think, and for 100 minutes you’ll be asked to do something we aren’t always good at as a society. Just listen.

Small Mouth Sounds is presented by Queensland Theatre Company and runs to 1 November. Bille Brown Theatre, 78 Montague Road South Brisbane Qld 4101.

Tickets are available here.

Website: https://queenslandtheatre.com.au/plays/small-mouth-sounds

Socials: https://www.instagram.com/qld_theatre/