Theatre review: The Sound Inside takes a gripping look at writing life's story

Kerry Sandomirsky and Jacob Leonard hand in strong performances in an enigmatic play full of literary allusions

By Vince Kanasoot

Kerry Sandomirksy in The Sound Inside. Photo by David Cooper

The Sound Inside continues at The Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab to November 24

“IF YOUR PROTAGONIST is leading you then you’ll likely stay ahead of your reader,” says Bella Baird, one of two characters in Adam Rapp’s play The Sound Inside. But what happens when we can no longer stay ahead of the story we’re trying to write for our own lives?

Rapp’s gripping and thought-provoking play, directed here by The Search Party’s Mindy Parfitt, examines what can happen when a darkness inside us—be it disease, loneliness, inner turmoil, or something else—threatens to seize control of our narrative. It’s being produced by actor Kerry Sandomirsky’s new all day breakfast theatre.

Despite an almost nonexistent set—the exposed cement wall of the performance space serves as a stark backdrop—The Sound Inside weaves a dark, mysterious tale that commands attention for its entire 90-minute duration.

In the play, we see Bella (Sandomirsky), a novelist and creative-writing professor at Yale, visited in her office by one of her students, Christopher Dunn (Jacob Leonard). Christopher is a loner with a simmering anger and troubled demeanour that suggest deep personal struggles. Bella, too, is a recluse and is grappling with personal issues, including haunting memories from her mother’s passing away from cancer.  

What draws this pair close is their passion for fiction. They fervently discuss the works of writers such as JD Salinger, Honoré de Balzac, James Salter, and particularly Fyodor Dostoevsky. In fact, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment plays an integral role in the play, with Christopher strangely fixated on it, seemingly wanting to align his life with Dostoevsky’s protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov. Similarly, Bella has a novel that she latches onto, Salter’s Light Years. Whether intentional or by coincidence or manifestation, we see the lives of both characters influenced by their literary obsessions as their relationship deepens and precariously approaches dark crossroads.

Jacob Leonard and Kerry Sandomirsky. Photo by David Cooper

The play unfolds as if watching a novel-in-progress. Sandomirsky and Leonard narrate half the show’s action directly to the audience, as if they’re writing the story as they go. Sandomirsky is captivating from start to finish, often gazing wistfully into the crowd as Bella recounts memories, filling us in on what happened years, hours, or even seconds ago. Her vivid storytelling takes us to various locales in New Haven, be it a leaf-covered park in autumn or her lonesome apartment. Leonard, with his quiet intensity, offers a terrific counterpart, and the relationship between the pair results in an incredible mix of tension, sensitivity, and intimate connection.

At one point, Bella describes Christopher’s writing as being “beautifully restrained”, an apt reflection of Rapp’s own intricately layered script, with metaphoric details woven throughout. While having read Crime and Punishment is by no means necessary to understand the play, those with at least a familiarity of the plot will find added depth in the many allusions to the Dostoevsky work. Moreover, the play questions the finality of stories—particularly the story of our lives.

Writers are known to obsess over their works, reluctant to put the pen down. Fittingly, the characters here are committed to storytelling even past the last scene. Like a book that you can’t put down, The Sound Inside will keep you ruminating over the narrative long after the play is over.  

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