Silent Voice

The opening of Silent Voice is all sparks and bangs, and you’d be forgiven for thinking the rest of the show will continue in the same vein. After this impressive, intense start, however, things start to sag beneath overwraught dialogue and repetitive staging ideas.

This is an on-the-run narrative with a lot of running. Forrest Gump levels of the stuff. Four young South African men, struggling to pay their way and with hungry mouths to feed, steal a small fortune and spend 60 minutes running away, encountering various obstacles along the way. Betrayal, emotions and shouting follow.

It’s a tight narrative, but there are ideas used that smack of someone frantically trying out everything to see what works. Hence the running. And the strange mist shower. And the rag doll puppets. There’s even a segment of audience interaction where it’s completely unclear what our roles are.

The language is sticky, school-play fare too: “I know I need money to survive, but I’m not sure this is the way to do it,” says one character. “If only we can make it to the safe house, we will be safe,” says another. To give them their due, the quartet of actors do the best they can with a script which forces them to oscillate emotionally for the duration. There’s some attempt at socio-political commentary here, but beyond the abilities of our actors, Silent Voice doesn’t contain much substance.