Review: Hear. Speak. See. (Expial Atrocious, GM Fringe)

July 2022
Digital Event

The Greater Manchester Fringe runs throughout July, with performances at various venues around Greater Manchester and online. Once again, I’m going to be reviewing a selection of the productions on offer for this blog, and also for The Festival Show on North Manchester FM.

The next show I saw this year was a digital production, and it was part of the GMF Digital Events strand on this year’s Fringe programme.

The production I’m going to be reviewing now is available to stream with a ticket purchase from the Greater Manchester Fringe website throughout the month of July. I’m reviewing Hear. Speak. See., an immersive drama by Expial Atrocious. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on The Festival Show on Friday 29th July, but here’s the blog version…

I mentioned in my previous review of Eliane Morel’s Disenchanted: A Cabaret of Twisted Fairy Tales that the digital theatre productions on this year’s festival programme are very varied, both in terms of their content and the ways they use the storytelling techniques facilitated by digital technologies.

A brief comparison of Disenchanted and Expial Atrocious’s Hear. Speak. See. reveals this variety beautifully. I’ve not really got space to do that comparison, so you really should watch both of these shows yourself to find out! Seriously.

Hear. Speak. See. is a short film production that uses video technology to create an unsettling immersive experience for the audience – and it’s clearly intended for individual viewers to stream in their own time, as it’s a show that very specifically denies a communal audience and privileges the perspective of the individual viewer.

Allow me to explain…

Hear. Speak. See. takes place at a dinner party. ‘You’ have been invited and have been told that it will be a dinner party like no other. And ‘you’ are the viewer – the film is shot from a first-person perspective, so the viewer becomes the guest at the dinner. When the three cast members address the fourth guest, they are addressing you, the viewer. It’s an immersive experience, but also a gloriously unsettling one.

And make no mistake, ‘gloriously unsettling’ is the best description of this piece of theatre, which packs a lot into its surprisingly short running time. It really is an immersive piece, and so it feels like you are at that dinner party for a long time.

The other guests at the party are played by Nic Lawton, Ez Holland and Faye Bingham (who also cowrote and codirected the piece). They are dressed in white costumes and are greeting one another – and you – as though this is a long-awaited catch-up with old friends.

But it clearly isn’t a catch-up with old friends. Not only do you (as you are now a character in the play) don’t recognize the others or understand the nature of the gathering, but there’s something off about the conversation. The interactions between the other three guests don’t flow smoothly, and there’s a tendency to non-sequiturs or almost nonsensical responses. The dynamic between the three is also hard to determine. At times, they chat to one another as though they see each other regularly, but at others they seem more distant, as though they are reunited after a long time. The only thing that is consistent is that they are determined the dinner party must happen, and that you must remain seated at the table with them.

In case it’s not clear from this description, we’re in the world of absurdist theatre with Hear. Speak. See. This is a piece that defies straightforward explanation or narrative exposition. Although some snippets of sound recordings at the beginning – which will be revisited towards the end – offer a tantalizing hint of context or backstory, there is a continued denial of both logic and progression. There isn’t a ‘story’ here, and nor can we really talk about ‘themes’, though ideas of justice and retribution echo through the performance, and there is a glimmer of exposition in the development of Bingham’s performance towards the end of the film. Ultimately, though, the film resists easy interpretation.

Characterization, too, is vague and uncertain. Lawton’s character appears to be the host of the event, and there are a number of references to the event being held in her house. (Of course, this doesn’t make complete sense, as at one point Holland moves around you and, as your perspective follows her movements, lights at the edge above her clearly reveal the edge of the set, undermining what little verisimilitude remained.) Holland’s character begins as a more gregarious, friendly fellow guest, but there are undertones of something more brittle beneath the surface. Bingham’s character almost appears to be in control at points, and is the most unequivocally hostile towards you (and towards Holland and Lawton’s characters too, at times).

Generally speaking, the hostility underlying Bingham’s interactions, and the party as a whole, isn’t overt. The more appropriate term would be menace, I feel. And, of course, this sense of menace, coupled with the explicitly ‘party’ setting encourages some comparison with Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party. And this comparison would not be unfavourable either.

In addition to the verbal absurdity and confusion, which creates some of the atmosphere of menace, there is physical absurdity. The acting here is never naturalistic, but at times it becomes even more artificial – more consciously a performance – as the three actors suddenly move in choreographed synchronicity, or a physical altercation is played out through stylized but non-contact stage moves. There are brief, nightmarish cutaways in which the scene transforms into one of pain and agony, the performers contorted and screaming, for mere moments without explanation.

The performances here are really impressive. A highlight for me was the scene in which Bingham, Holland and Lawton eat plates of tomato bruschetta and salad leaves. That’s it – that’s all that happens – and the scene goes on for so long it’s downright uncomfortable to watch (and this is one of the moments in the play that really distorts the audience’s sense of the play’s overall running time). This scene really is a thing of absurd, disturbing, almost grotesque beauty, constantly gesturing to something beyond the performance – a theme? a backstory? an interpretation of events? – without actually explaining it.

Towards the end of the piece, we begin to get a clearer sense of what might have provoked or enabled the party to be thrown, as well as an idea of the role Bingham’s character plays in this. However, this isn’t really an answer, as our understanding of what, exactly, the party actually is continues to be elusive. Who or what Lawton and Holland’s characters are, and why they are involved is even more uncertain as the play moves towards its conclusion.

If, like me, you’re a fan of the Theatre of the Absurd, then Hear. Speak. See. is definitely one to watch. It’s a gem of a piece – visually stylish, bafflingly disturbing and with pitch-perfect performances from the cast. If Theatre of the Absurd isn’t something you know much about, or if you don’t count yourself as a fan, I’d still say give it a go. The short running time (despite it feeling way longer) allows a somewhat easier introduction to this style of theatre than full-length plays, and who knows? that visual style and those pitch-perfect performances might just win you over to the absurd side.

I know I quite often end my reviews by saying that the piece I’m talking about is a recommendation or a strong recommendation. And I make no apologies for that – I see some good stuff! But in this case I’m going to go even further and say that Hear. Speak. See. is one of my highlights of this year’s festival, and I’m very glad I got to see it.

Hear. Speak. See. is available to stream throughout the month of July, as part of the GMF Digital Events strand on this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe programme. For the full programme of Greater Manchester Fringe shows on this year, please visit the festival website.