The Sound Inside
Five Things To Love About The Sound Inside
All Marie-Louise Parker
The Sound Inside is a two-hander featuring Mary-Louise Parker and Will Hochman. Hochman is assured and engaging in his Broadway debut, but Parker is the heart of the play, terrific here in an academic role (both in the sense of playing a professor and of bringing a cerebral script to life) that she invests with depth and grace.
All Right, Fine, Stand That Close To Me
The Sound Inside is a frisson-flecked student/teacher drama, a burgeoning mini-genre that includes Oleanna, The Vertical Hour and (to stretch the definition a bit) The History Boys. Mary Louise Parker plays Bella, a professor of creative writing at Yale. Hochman’s character, Christopher, is a student at Yale. Playwright Adam Rapp has taught at Yale. The fact that a bulldog is not featured on stage is surely an oversight.
Bringing Sexy Back
Parker’s description of a one-night stand at the mid-point of the play (a perfectly-paced 90 minutes) is a masterclass of writing, performance and direction (by David Comer, the director of Orson’s Shadow, Adding Machine, Our Town, and many others who is now – with The Sound Inside and The Band’s Visit – taking his place as one of the handful of go-to ‘name’ directors on Broadway).
Bella’s Novel
The Sound Inside (I’m not sure that the title makes a lick of sense, though the play takes a crack at explaining it along the way) is about a creative writing teacher and a creative writing student, so it’s no surprise that we’re treated to a bit of creative writing along the way. One of the things that endears Christopher to Bella is that fact that he’s one of the few people who has actually read her novel, and when Christopher describes her book at some length you say to yourself, yes, that does sound rather good, actually; just the sort of lilting fable that you’d expect from a cloistered-but-caring academic. Later in the play we’re presented with Christopher’s novel, and alas no amount of Bella telling him how good she thinks it is obscures the fact that it’s just the sort of self-impressed, semi-autobiographical dross churned out by first-year creative writing students everywhere – your reviewer very much included, back in the day.
The Ending That Got Away
If The Sound Inside ended when Bella glimpses (in her mind’s eye) an octopus she saw in an aquarium as a child – perhaps followed by a brief wrapping-things-up speech from Christopher – The Sound Inside might well merit a second Pulitzer Prize nomination for Rabb (previously nominated for Red Light Winter in 2005). But – spoiler alert – it doesn’t.