A woman stands alone on a stage. She has a story to tell and she knows how to tell it.
We are about to witness a strange and mystifying tale, one in which our perceptions will be constantly challenged. At the end of Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside we will be left with more questions than answers, but we will know that we have just experienced something extraordinary.
Beverley Baird (Madeleine Potter) is a professor of creative writing at Yale. Fiction is her life, Dostoevsky her hero. To write, she tells her students, you must read. And when you create your characters you should do so with economy. Let the reader’s imagination do the heavy lifting.
Despite this, Baird tells us quite a bit about herself. She’s single, has never been married and has no children. She loves books,
‘I’m a whore for first editions’
Her mother died horribly from a rare form of stomach cancer, becoming ‘a childlike larval version of herself.’
And now Baird herself has stomach cancer (though not the same one). Her oncologist does not rate her chances. Her description of the discussion in which they trade percentages is macabrely funny. There are a perhaps surprising number of good jokes in this play.
Into Baird’s freshman class comes Christopher Corbett Dunn (Eric Sirakian.) He’s different from most students. He spends coffee breaks reading over his work. He turns up at her office hour without the required appointment. He doesn’t like emails. Or rules. He’s writing a novel on an old Corona typewriter. He’s as into Dostoevsky as she is.
Baird has found a kindred spirit. Several more office hours are spent in intense, quick fire debates about literature; he seems just as obsessed as she is. But while Baird appears to have few friends and little life outwith her career, Dunn talks about a girl he fancies at the library, though he won’t name her. He also tells Baird about his mother, who – he says – is a famous mystery author, possibly agoraphobic and writing under a pseudonym. What is it? He will not say.
Teacher and student are equally fascinated by one other, and at one point they decide to ask each other questions. Their responses – or their failures to respond – raise more questions than they answer. Dunn wants to know why Baird is alone. She tries to deny it. He also asks why she’s written nothing since a novel published seventeen years ago; he’s ordered a copy specially and even read it. This seems to displease her. He’s writing his own novel, the plot of which he reveals to her in parts. Does it matter, he asks, that he doesn’t know where the story is going? No, she replies; it’s much better that way.
Dunn is unpredictable and a little scary. When he loses his temper with Baird, he spits on her office floor – though he then, at her request, washes it. His novel seems at first to follow a recognisable trajectory; college student meets con man and ends up paying for his ticket into town, and ultimately their shared hotel room (the student is not, Dunn says, gay.) But then the story turns on its head with a shocking act of violence; we wonder where that came from, and indeed why. He tells Baird he feels the story ‘is writing me’, and later that it is taking over his life. And eventually he names the student Christopher.
And just when we think we know how Baird and Dunn’s story will end, that too is turned upside down; once again we must question what is really going on here. It’s a slippery surface, a hall of mirrors.
The Sound Inside is a complicated, multi-faceted play; the more you try to understand it, the more it confounds you. The one photograph Baird has on her office wall becomes increasingly significant. Dunn’s novel has some similarities with Baird’s, but only some. Where is its plot going? In the end, I think, we are left wondering what was real and what was fiction, and whether it is ever entirely possible to tell the difference.
Potter and Sirakian inhabit their characters impressively, she smart, witty, brittle, he smart-ass, clever, elusive, unsettling. The production is a small masterclass in minimalism; on a stage bare but for two chairs these accomplished actors create an entirely believable world, one which would, indeed, satisfy Baird’s instructions; let your audience do the work. The Sound Inside doesn’t, however, feel like work. It’s not even lunchtime when we emerge into the sunshine on Lothian Road, but we’ll probably be thinking about this play all day. I know I was.
The Sound Inside is at Venue 15, Traverse Theatre, until 25 August, times vary (see Fringe or Traverse websites for details). Please note there are no performances on Mondays 12 and 19 August. Tickets here.
