Silent retreats have been in vogue in the west for the last few years as a reprieve from a hectic world. Most people go hoping to find a new perspective on their lives by escaping the constant noise of the digital age. But American playwright Bess Wohl’s Small Mouth Sounds, which follows six people on such a retreat, shows that it’s not as easy to leave your problems at the door as it is your voice.
There’s the reckless young woman who rocks up late and can’t get off her phone (Amber McMahon), the two women whose connection with one another is being tested (Sharon Millerchip and Jane Phegan), two men who have shown up with enormous loss in their past (Yalin Ozucelik and Justin Smith), and a cocky celebrity yoga teacher who doesn’t seem any more in touch with himself than any of the other urbanites (Dorje Swallow).
The beauty of Wohl’s writing is that we’re able to sympathise with these characters even though we have very little concrete information about them. Their stories slowly reveal themselves to the audience in both funny and quiet moments: we see the way a man relates to a photo that he’s brought with him, we see the way a woman breaks down at the mention of certain words, and we see the way a man is trying to rebuild himself by forming a relationship with a fellow retreater. All the while there’s a panther stalking around the retreat, ready to snatch an unwary meditator.
Despite the fact that swathes of the play happen with only the sounds of nature (Tegan Nicholls’ sound design is largely understated and very effective) there’s a compelling and relatively complex plot unfolding throughout.
The lack of dialogue presents a unique challenge in interpreting the actions written into the script. Director Jo Turner, who also plays the disembodied voice of the guru leading the retreat, has varying levels of success across the play’s 90-minute running time. You couldn’t accuse his production of lacking narrative clarity, but he has his actors signposting plot twists and playing for laughs in a way that undermines the play’s emotional core. Moments of comic miscommunication – which were gently, awkwardly funny in the original 2015 New York production which I saw – feel more like Mr Bean sketches. One particular scene that should be a tender and revealing moment between two characters is skipped over in mere moments.
Turner could put more trust in the play and in his audience’s ability to draw their own inferences about what’s happening on stage. At least he has plenty of trust in his actors, who are all enormously likable, even when they never say a word. But it’s a shame that they spend so much time clowning – and are described in Turner’s director’s note as clowns – rather than playing real, vulnerable humans reaching a crisis.
Wohl’s play survives this treatment, and remains undeniably entertaining. It’s not an egregious misreading of the work, but it’s a shame that it’s pitched too high and never allowed to be quite as moving as it can be. For a play about a silent retreat, it could do with the volume turned down a notch or two.