Andrew Bovell might be 30 years older than he was when he wrote the play Speaking in Tongues, but there won’t be any changes to the plot when the new season for Black Swan State Theatre starts at the Heath Ledger Theatre in Perth.
Central to the play is a telephone box and a character running out of coins.
Bovell says it sets the play very firmly in the nineties and just wouldn’t work in today’s mobile phone era.
He has also changed as a writer over the last 30 years.
“Obviously I know a lot more about drama and theatre now than I did then,” he says.
“And I feel like in not knowing all the rules, I was kind of willing to break them in ways that maybe I’d be a little bit more cautious to now. That felt like ground-breaking work in the mid-90s when I wrote it.
“And I remember being really excited by the discoveries I was making about what a play could be. I’d like to think that I could write the same play but 30 years wiser, maybe not?”
The play today is exactly as it was written.
“Humphrey Bower, the director and I, talked a lot, about should we update it to now? And we rejected the idea because the piece, to unravel that piece which very much, captures a moment, how we thought, how we behaved, how we acted, how we communicated then, and to try and unravel that and find the equivalent now would be impossible.
“We’ve changed a lot in 30 years, and the play would fundamentally change.”
Bovell says the way we communicate has inherently changed.
“We didn’t have the internet to the same degree we have now. We didn’t have mobile phones. The whole plot rests on, or one of the plots, rests on a woman not being able to find her husband easily. She’s in a phone box, she’s using coins to try and call him and she’s running out of money. Her car’s broken down, she’s in trouble, she can’t reach her husband. Well, that’s changed. We can reach whoever we need to, whenever we need to.
“And that feels like that’s a fundamental difference. We’re not as isolated as we once were.
“But also 30 years later, there’s a reference to child abuse, sexual abuse in the play. There’s a psychiatrist and she suggests that a lot of psychological problems in adulthood are rooted in the childhood experience of some form of abuse.
“Now 30 years ago that was still a fairly unusual idea and we didn’t really want to believe that. Thirty years later we now know the extent of child abuse through institutions and families and society. And we know that to be true now. In that sense, the play is quite prescient in terms of how it addressed trauma. We just know a lot more about that now.
“I think also our theatre audiences are always getting more and more sophisticated about how we relate, but a play about love and trust and betrayal – that’s a universal theme and an endless theme.
“But with each new generation we’re a little bit more savvy, a little bit more wise around these issues too.
“And the play’s become a bit of a classic and you don’t really mess with classics.
“Humphrey, I’m sure, will bring a contemporary feel to it. You just can’t help but do that. But we’ve kept it word-for-word as it was first performed.”
Bovell, who grew up in WA, lives in South Australia these days and for part of the year in Greece, but will be coming to Perth for rehearsals and will also be back for the opening night.
He won’t be interfering though.
“I’ll be very respectful. I think if this was a new play, and this was the first production, I’d be there from day one trying to solve it and work it out with the director and the actors, because you never really know whether a play’s going to work until you put it on the floor. But this play’s been around for a while now, and I feel like I can trust the play and trust the ensemble to do it.”
Bovell says Speaking in Tongues is a play that bridges two genres.
“It’s a really honest look at relationships, at marriage, but it’s also a mystery and a thriller, a whodunit. I hope audiences find it really compelling, it’s a compelling story, but also what it does formally, the way it cuts up the narrative and intertwines the stories, I think it gives an audience real pleasure because it asks them to do some of the work. They’ve got to work it out themselves, who’s connected to who and how each person relates to the other.
“And there’s some pleasure in that. When the penny drops the audience goes ‘ah-ha’, there’s lots of ah-ha moments in it.”
Bovell says he is thrilled that each new generation wants to re-look at the play and it still has something to say.
Speaking in Tongues stars Alexandria Steffensen, Catherine Moore, Matt Edgerton and Luke Hewitt and is directed by Humphrey Bower.
The synopsis describes the play as a masterfully interconnected drama about the relationships between lovers, strangers, and the infinite ways people are entangled.
It was famously adapted for the screen in 2001 as the multi-award-winning film Lantana, featuring a star-studded cast including Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia, Rachael Blake, and Kerry Armstrong.
“Speaking in Tongues is classic Bovell – finely crafted, emotionally resonant, and full of interwoven stories that draw you in and won’t let go,” said Kate Champion, artistic director of Black Swan.
“It makes us question whether two people in the same relationship can ever be sure that they know each other – Andrew just really knows how to handle those questions so well,” she said.
Speaking in Tongues presented by Black Swan State Theatre runs from August 23 to September 14 at the Heath Ledger Theatre.
Bookings at www.blackswantheatre.com.au or by calling (08) 6212 9300.
