The Sound Inside
Written by Adam Rappelled
Directed by David Cromer
Studio 54
January 29, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

Wow!   This is the most unexpected play of the entire trip and one of the most beautiful.  I had no idea what to expect – I had read notihng in advance of the show.  I knew that it was at Studio 54 and I expected it to be big and bold.  It was, but in a totally unexpended way!  It was my first surprise in an afternoon full of surprises.  

The play is a two-hander featuring the REMARKABLE Mary-Louise Parker coming to the story with 30+ years of remarkable stage work – she is an entire theatrical event in herself.   The plot revolves around a  writing professor at Yale who has just received a diagnosis of stage 2 cancer. In much of the play, she addresses the audience directly as if reading a novel-in-progress aloud.  The story then eventually includes Christopher Dunn, a freshman in a course of hers called Reading Fiction for Craft.  She is a mysterious teacher with surprises up her sleeve and he is a misfit of Yale that just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere.

And when the two collide – – a rollercoaster of events begins to fly!  I sat there always thinking that I could predict the next turn in the story but I was never, never right.  You just cannot anticipate the outcome – and once you get there you look back at the story story and wonder how you got there.  

The other wonderful feature about this afternoon’s event was the beautiful, florid language.  It felt like you had stepped into beautiful novel full of the riches metaphors and language.  I just wanted the play to slow down a bit so i could absorb all the wonderment in the words.  This is one play that I certainly intend to read at a later time.  

A last wonderful feature of the production is the more than minimal setting on the big stage of Studio 54.  I could so see this play having its workshop in smaller Off-Broadway Theatre – but it is remarkable that it survives the big stage with nothing added.  I am certain it is Mary Louse Parker who provides all the setting necessary.  Please see this!  It is a total treat on so many levels.