Speaking in Tongues
By Andrew Bovell
Directed by Philip Riccio
January 22 – February 24
The Belfry Theatre

Reviewed by Leah Callen

Meet Pete, Jane, Sonja, and Leon. Pete and Jane are married; Sonja and Leon are married. But Pete wants Sonja, and Jane wants Leon. Thus, two one-night stands overlap in time and space in one hotel room. These characters have a lot in common: lovers, lines, and gestures. Their synchronized dancing suggests that everyone dances the same in the dark. But, the strange unison splits eventually, and each coupling ends on a different note.

Speaking in Tongues felt like a seedy service dedicated to desire in the renovated nave of the Belfry, where characters share unholy confessions. Everyone wants someone, to feel something, to light a burnt-out candle to lust or devotion. Driven by desire, they intersect emotionally like a car crash.

As the play unfolds, the irony is that characters confess their feelings freely to drunken strangers, to a note-taking therapist or a cop. A particularly amusing bar scene brews between Peter and Leon as they unbottle their feelings over beer. But, people struggle to face anything head on with their intimate partners. They speak subtext to their spouses by putting themselves in someone else’s brown brogues using metaphorical monologues. These lengthy scenes tried the congregation’s patience somewhat, but were less disorienting than the echoing hotel scene. Scene transitions were sometimes seamless, but each one spoke such a different language that the play overall lacked coherence.

The adrenaline-charged second act shows Valerie trying desperately to reach her husband on a pay phone in the middle of nowhere before she vanishes. New characters piece together her story. Nick was the last to see her alive, and the last to handle her stiletto. Yanna McIntosh’s deer-in-the-headlights panic as Valerie panting in the darkness made my hair stand on end.

The actors fill the shoes of several characters whose lives spill into each other. Richard Clarkin plays the jilted lover, Neil, with gut-wrenching pathos. Hélène Joy gave me chills as the psychopathic Sarah who eats men alive, rubbing one leg over the other slowly like a predatory cricket. Jonathon Goad seduced us with natural ease as the smooth-talking and smooth-haired cop, Leon.

While these characters worship and excommunicate one another casually, the plot undresses the truth: sex has long-term side effects. Our lives continue to overlap long after we leave the hotel room.

Leah Callen is an aspiring poet-playwright-screenwriter studying at the University of Victoria.