Speaking in Tongues

**BY ANDREW BOVELL**
**Directed by Heidi Gledhill**
5th September - 28th September, 2024

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About the Play

Nine lives weave together in ways known and unknown in Andrew Bovell’s piercing drama, Speaking in Tongues. Leon is married to Sonja, Jane is married to Pete. By chance, each spouse meets the other’s one night and wind up in motel rooms. Pete and Sonja resist the one-night stand; Leon and Jane do not. A lonely man, Neil, pines for the love of his life, Sarah, who moved on decades ago. A woman, Valerie, goes missing and her stiletto was last seen in Nick’s car. Love, marriage, infidelity and betrayal are all tackled in this tense, electrifying play about the relationships between lovers, strangers, and the infinite ways people may wound one another.

Speaking in Tongues won Andrew Bovell the AWGIE award iin 1996. This play has been seen throughout Australia as well as in Europe and the US.

Andrew Bovell adapted Speaking in Tongues for the screen as Lantana (2001) which won many awards, including seven AFIs.

Lantana is currently available to watch on Netflix.

CAST

Pete, Neil, John | Gregory J Wilken

Leon, Nick |

Sonja, Sarah |

Jane, Valerie |

CREATIVES & CREW

Director | Heidi Gledhill

Stage Manager | Isabel Folland

Reviews

Please note that reviews are of other productions until the season commences.

"Bovell is known for his tricky use of language, his stylized and theatrical overlapping and intertwining of dialogue, repletion over scenes which sit lineally in a play, and scenes which overlap within it. He deliberately withholds from his audience, secrets coming forth with the unwinding of the play and the densely packed dialogue. But for this theatricality and coincidence, Bovell still manages to create characters that seem to naturally express themselves in their Australian idiom."

No Plain Jane | Read full review

"Speaking in Tongues is the perfect play for people who like intellectual puzzles. I have seen three plays by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell – Holy Day (2001) by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2003, When the Rain Stops Falling (2008) by the Shaw Festival in 2011 and now Speaking in Tongues (1996) by the Company Theatre – and all three show a fascination with interlocking stories and the question of whether human activity is governed more by chance or by fate. In all three plays actions that people assume are private affect others in unforeseeable ways. What makes Bovell unusual is that he is one of the few playwrights after Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard who experiments with form as well as content. Rain presented interleaved stories from three time periods, including the future, in an associative, non-chronological order. Tongues is by far the most formalized of the three, but its structure breaks new ground in how a play can be put together at the same as it reinforces Bovell’s central themes.

Stage Door | Read full review

"Speaking in Tongues is the perfect play for people who like intellectual puzzles. I have seen three plays by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell – Holy Day (2001) by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2003, When the Rain Stops Falling (2008) by the Shaw Festival in 2011 and now Speaking in Tongues (1996) by the Company Theatre – and all three show a fascination with interlocking stories and the question of whether human activity is governed more by chance or by fate. In all three plays actions that people assume are private affect others in unforeseeable ways. What makes Bovell unusual is that he is one of the few playwrights after Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard who experiments with form as well as content. Rain presented interleaved stories from three time periods, including the future, in an associative, non-chronological order. Tongues is by far the most formalized of the three, but its structure breaks new ground in how a play can be put together at the same as it reinforces Bovell’s central themes.

Murray Bramwell | Read full review