Speaking in Tongues
Speaking In Tongues
Milwaukee Rep
March 11, 2011
I had heard a lot about this show; critics were saying that this was awesome. A great exploration of human behavior and relationships and what not. "a challenging and engrossing examination of love, trust, betrayal and need in a turbulent and fragile world" ... and then another review about how it was about these two couples trying to save their marriages.
The official advertising said: "A mysterious stiletto shoe . . . a lonely country road . . . an abandoned car - and an abundance of betrayal. As a detective in the midst of his own crisis investigates the disappearance of a prominent psychiatrist, the seemingly random confessions of apparent strangers are woven into a powerful web of infidelity, love, isolation and intrigue."
So I have to say that I was a little confused. Going off the description of the advertising, I thought I would like it a lot. Going off the reviews, I wasn't so sure. But I already had the tickets. So being a tiny bit uncertain about what the show was actually going to turn out to be about, off we were to go see it.
There was a mysterious stiletto shoe, and a lonely country road, and an abandoned car, and the detective investigating, but that wasn't brought up until the last ten minutes or so of the first act. The second act was about the missing psychiatrist, but there wasn't really much of a mystery to it. Granted we never find out what really happens to the missing psychiatrist, but I think that her fate is pretty clear.
The show really was a lot more about being faithful to one's love, and how to deal with betrayal, and if it's possible to put the pieces back together again or not.
There were four actors, and nine characters, so there was a lot of doubling up. There were also three distinct parts to the show. Act One was Part One and Act Two were Parts Two and Three. They all sorta lead into each other nicely.
Cast:
Leon/Nick: Lee Ernst
Sonja/Sarah: Jenny McKnight
Pete/Neil/John: Jonathan Smoots
Jane/Valerie: Deborah Staples
The set was actually decently elaborate. In the first act, we had a bed in the center of the stage, on a turn table. That was a hotel room. The headboard of the bed doubled as a bar when they turned it around. There were bar stools and a table behind the bed. On the left side of the stage was a couch and end table - a living room. On the right side of the stage we had a table and some chairs - a kitchen.
They changed the set quite a bit for the second act. We were watching the stage crew change the set, although I didn't notice them right away. How I missed a bunch of people moving the bed off stage is beyond me, but I didn't notice them.
In the second act they had a different sort of couch, a psychiatrist couch, with a matching chair on the left side of the stage. On the right side, they had a table and chair, in the middle, there was a metal table with a chair, and in the center of the back was a phone booth. Then the metal table was removed for part three, and another chair was added to the other table.
As I said, there were four actors, and nine characters. One thing that was neat was how much they changed. There was significant costume changes between the different parts, and people put on different wigs, so it was very very easy to tell that they were different characters. The actors used rather different voices and accents for their characters as well, so it was easy to forget that they were the same people.
The show opened with all four people coming out on stage in couples. They were standing on either side of the bed. Basically, all four people are married people having affairs. Leon is having an affair with Jane, who is married to Pete, who is having an affair with Sonja, who is married to Leon. All clear?
It wasn't immediately made clear that they were cheating on each other with each other's spouse right away, but as the scene went on, it became obvious.
One thing about this scene that was quite neat was that most of the lines were spoken in unison or at least repeating another person. "I've never done this before," say both women in unison. "Neither have I," respond both men. Sometimes the girls would speak together, and sometimes the guys would speak together, and sometimes the married couples would speak together. It was most impressive when then lines were almost the same, but not quite: "I've never been with another man/woman but my wife/husband."
The couples were discussing their spouses before they slept together. That's when it became clear to the audience, or at least to me, that they were connected that way.
In the end, Pete and Sonja decided that they couldn't do it, but Leon and Jane did.
The next scene has everyone going home, and Pete and Sonja tell Jane and Leon what they almost did. There was still a lot of speaking almost the same lines, although they weren't quite in unison any more, as the couples started to diverge a bit. All of the various and assorted cheating came out, and Sonja and Pete leave, upset. I watched Leon and Sonja a bit more because they were on the side of the stage that we were sitting closer to.
The bed was on a turntable and it rotated around to show a bar. One of my favorite scenes in the play was when Pete came into the bar, where Leon was. The two men, not knowing each other, start talking. I don't remember how it came up, but Pete comes out with, "What are you, a cop?" and Leon says, "Well... yes." And Pete said that he thought so. Leon was quite upset, he wanted to know why Pete thought he was a cop. "Is it the hair cut?" As they talk, Leon listens to Pete vent, and then realizes that Pete is Jane's wife. Things get a little awkward, but Pete remains clueless. In something that I think turned out to be foreshadowing, Leon was going on and on about how having an affair is a mistake that people make sometimes, and forgiveness and willingness to work through things is important in a marriage. Pete says that it's not that simple. It's a betrayal, and if someone does it once, and is forgiven, they are likely to do it again.
In another bar, the two women met. Sonja is rather tipsy. She tells Jane about how first she had one drink, and then another, and then, well, if she had two, she might as well have three, and four is so close to three that it doesn't make much of a difference. She says she is drinking to forget, but it's not really working. She and Jane swap stories about why they are currently separated from their husbands. As they tell their stories, we hear a bit more about what makes the girls tick. Sonja is much more confident in her life and general state of being than Jane is. When Jane starts talking about Leon though, Sonja puts two and two together and she gets rather upset, although she tries to hide it.
So we started off with two scenes running at the same time in the hotel room, then we had mirrored scenes in the living room and kitchen, and then we had two similar scenes in the bars. After this, things diverged a bit.
Sonja went home and saw Leon again. She's dancing around by herself, and he watches her for a little bit before asking if she wants a drink. I liked how he acted like her dancing around in the living room was no big deal. Leon tells her this story about how he took up jogging, and one day on his run, he met this man. Actually, he ran into the man. Literally. Then he tells her the story that the man told him, that he was in love with this woman many years ago, they were going to get married as soon as she returned from Europe, only, she never came back. He had been waiting for her for many years, and the one day, he saw her. He followed her, and saw her at a restaurant but she didn't recognize him. Leon would meet this man on the beach every day, until one day, the man wasn't there. But he had memorable shoes, and Leon found them on the beach.
Leon tells Sonja that he misses her, and the affair was the biggest mistake that he has ever made, and that without her, his life is awful. She says basically the same, and the two of them sit down on the couch together. I think that it's implied that they spend the rest of the night talking. What they really did though, was sit there in the dark for the rest of the first act.
Pete comes home and Jane says that she wants to talk to him, but not about "that". When he walked in, he saw Jane dancing around by herself, and Pete asks her what on earth she is doing. A bit of a contrast with Leon. She says that she can't sleep at night, and so she gets up in the middle of the night and does random things. Anyway, one night, she got up and saw their neighbor Nick coming home after midnight. For some odd reason, she decided to watch him, and she saw him take a shoe out of his front seat, walk across the street to a vacant lot, and throw the shoe into the lot. He comes back and sees her. He told her that he found a dog bone in his front yard, and he didn't want it where his kids could get at it. She realizes that he is covered in mud, and his face is all scratched up. The next day, she heard on the news that a woman was missing. The day after that, she called the police and told them what she saw, and they came and questioned Nick. They took him away, and then Nick's wife came by, very upset. She says that she knew Nick didn't do this, because he told her he didn't, and that was good enough for her. Jane is upset to realize that she wouldn't just trust Pete the same way Nick's wife trusts him, and that's a problem.
Another important, but seemingly random thing, is that Pete told her this story about how he was walking down the street and this woman just started screaming at him. He didn't say a thing to her, but she was yelling at him like he had assaulted her.
Act two started with four different people. We had Sarah, a woman sitting on a therapy couch, Valarie, a therapist, by the pay phone, Nick, sitting behind the metal table, and Neil, sitting behind the other table. Again, I'd like to say that they looked and sounded nothing like their previous incarnations: Sonja, Jane, Leon and Pete.
Part two was rather different story telling. For most of it, the four characters did not interact with each other. We had four different things going on at the same time, and the actors would alternate line by line. One would think that would be confusing, but it actually worked pretty well.
Sarah is in therapy talking about her problems, that she can't seem to be in a stable relationship, and now this guy from her past keeps sending her letters. She saw him, and didn't recognize him at first, but then she remembered that he was in love with her, and she wasn't in love with him, so she went to Europe.
Neil is reading his letters that he is writing to Sarah. He saw her, on the bus, and then in a restaurant. He asks her why she left him, why she never contacted him again. He thought they were in love. He sends her all of the old letters that she sent him from Europe, and while they were dating. He also tells her about a man that he works with, a man whose wife vanished. Neil says that he can sympathize. After awhile of this, he tells Sarah that this will be his last letter to her. He will no longer contact her.
Nick is sitting behind the table, in the police station. He is telling about himself, and his story. He's been out of work for awhile, and he doesn't like that. But he always goes to the tavern on Wednesdays, and this time he purposely stayed later. He is annoyed with his wife, and he wants to make her worry. As he's driving along though, he's going down a back road, because it's faster.
Valarie is standing by the payphone. She has had a terrible day, she forgot her purse and cellphone at work, and her car broke down as she was traveling down this dark back road. She found a payphone, but her husband isn't home, and she keeps calling and leaving messages. She's upset about being stranded, but also it sounds like she's upset with her husband. They are drifting apart, and she doesn't like that.
At one point during their narrations, all four characters start speaking about this dream that they had. Sarah dreams that she's standing by the edge of the ocean, at the base of a cliff. She looks up and sees this woman at the top of the cliff. The tide comes in, and she can't run anywhere, and she wakes up. Valarie is dreaming that she is walking along a cliff. She looks down and sees a woman below her. Suddenly, the cliff starts to give away, and she starts falling. Then she wakes up.
Neil has a dream that he is walking through the woods, and he spots this clear stream. He strips and steps into the water. It's cold, but exhilarating. He swims around happily, when suddenly he realizes that there is someone watching him. He tries to swim back to the shore, but it's very far away now, and the water becomes rough and black. He's swimming and swimming and swimming and then he wakes up.
Nick is also walking through the woods when he hears splashing. He follows the sound, and then sees a man swimming in a pond. He turns to leave, giving the man some privacy, but then he can't find his way out of the forest.
Now as the story goes, it makes sense that Sarah and Valarie dream about each other. Valarie is Sarah's therapist. (Valarie doesn't like her) and Sarah, as it is revealed, is having an affair with Valarie's wife. But Nick and Neil have no interaction at all. If anything, Leon and Neil having the same dream would have made more sense, because Neil sort of bared his soul to Leon, and Leon was uncomfortable by that. That would have made sense. I have no idea why Nick and Neil saw each other in their dreams.
Finally we had interaction between two of the characters, as Nick says he saw a woman on the road, and Valarie said that she saw headlights approaching. I sort of liked how they did this, with Nick narrating, and Valarie adding in her lines when prompted. He gives her a ride, but when he turns down another dark road to take a short cut back to her house, she panics and jumps out of the car. He chases her through the woods, getting muddy and scratched, but he can't find her. He tries to tell her that he won't hurt her, that he is taking a short cut, but she won't come back. Finally, he just gives up and goes home. But when he gets home, he finds her shoe in his car. Not wanting to explain things to his wife, and wanting to be done with this whole thing, he takes the shoe and throws it away.
In part three, Nick and Neil left, and Leon returned, along with Valarie's husband, John. Valarie and Sarah are having therapy, and Leon is the investigating officer in Valarie's disappearance.
It's pretty clear that Valarie doesn't like Sarah, as they go through the therapy session. When she finds out that Sarah's current affair is with a married man, she gets rather upset. I'm not entirely sure if she knew that Sarah was going out with her husband or not, but either way, she was upset.
Leon is questioning John about the night that Valarie vanished. John changes his story a little bit. First he was working late, and when he came home, he heard the phone ringing, but he fumbled with his keys, so it took him a little longer to get into the house. When he entered, he heard Valarie's voice on the answering machine, and just heard her hang up before he could get to the phone. But then his story changes, he wasn't working late, he was off with his mistress. He entered the house, but would have had time to answer the phone, but he didn't. He said that he knew at that moment that she was never coming home, and... he was glad about that. He and Valarie do not have a healthy marriage. He says that Valarie is a difficult person, and it's not so much that he loves her, as that he is looking after her. John tells Leon one story about him and his wife a few days earlier. Valarie acted it out for us. She was outside of a restaurant, waiting for John to come out when she started yelling at a man that she thought assaulted her. She's terrified of strangers, especially men. Pete's random story wasn't so random after all.
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The play ended on somewhat of a downer. Sarah is at home, and she is listening to her answering machine. It's John: "Sarah, I need you. Sarah, why won't you return my calls? Sarah... please..."
And there it ended. Not a whole lot was resolved, and there was a lot left open.
But my favorite character, Leon the detective, got a happy ending. He and his wife were able to put their damaged marriage back together.
This was a very complicated story, but it was easy enough to follow with the way the performance was done. There was quite a bit of non-linear storytelling. But it was very neat to see it all come together in lots of ways. The playbill did list off some of the ways that people were connected: people who were married were listed as such, Valarie was listed as Sarah's therapist, and Neil and Sarah were exes. But it was neat seeing the other subtle relationships come popping up all over the place.