Festival news
Sound of Silence
21st o May 2009
The Gazette
Montreal, Canada
21 May 2009
Sound of Silence
By Pat Donnelly, Gazette Culture Critic
The Sound of Silence is a whimsical theatre piece which suggests that a peaceful anarchy was wrought behind the Iron Curtain by the songs of Simon and Garfunkel - listened to surreptitiously behind closed doors.
Of course, the underground influence of Western music in Soviet bloc countries was by no means restricted to the harmonious pair who recorded Bridge Over Troubled Water.
But Latvian director Alvis Hermanis, who has brought Sound of Silence to Festival Transamériques from Riga, isn't into realism except as a kickoff point. If he had tapped the Rolling Stones, Procol Harum or Bob Dylan, a darker vision of the 1960s would have emerged. Not to mention different rhythms.
Instead, Sound of Silence emphasizes the innocence of the hippie movement as 14 actors playfully enact a series of interconnected vignettes. Within a dilapidated apartment building of invisible dividing walls, which are sometimes respected, sometimes ignored, young people practice kissing, experiment with drugs, exchange looks - and books, and eventually get married and have babies.
No on plays air guitar, sings along or even tokes up. The intoxicating substance of choice appears to be milk.
We get impression that the flower children of Latvia were more naive than their North America counterparts.
It begins with two girls in miniskirts and boots, breaking into one apartment after another, just for the sake of mischief. In each apartment, they find something that magically unleashes the music of Simon and Garfunkel.
Then a woman in a babushka arrives, opens a suitcase full of headsets, and prepares for the visit of several men in suits who brandish badges (the KGB?). She sits them down, plugs them in and hovers as they drift off listening to Mrs. Robinson being told, "Jesus loves you more than you will know."
Taking a cue from Bookends, the title of the album that featured Mrs. Robinson, the play makes imaginative use of books as props. Bubbles are blown, a feather drifts - until it is snapped into a book just as S & G sing, "Is the theatre really dead?"
There's a nod to the 1966 Antonioni film Blow-Up, as a photographer frolics with models in his studio.
Essentially, Sound of Silence is a tribute show, with artistic intentions, a bit like the Cirque du Soleil's Beatles show, LOVE, in Las Vegas, only without the circus acts and mega-budget. The sketchy narrative connects to an earlier Hermanis work, Long Life, about co-habiting senior citizens.
The performers are superlative. At three hours, with intermission, this charming exercise goes on a bit too long. But it does leave the viewer with a much deeper appreciation of Simon and Garfunkel.
