REVIEW: Cocteau’s THE HUMAN VOICE adapted by Daniel Raggett at White Bear Theatre 5 – 9 March 2024

‘Priti Colbeck is very impressive …’ ★★★

Priti Colbeck is on stage for a long time, talking to an unseen other on a phone. Actually, the phone gets left on a table so she sticks in an ear bud and talks to the cosmos. Priti Colbeck is very impressive. This play reminds you of the difference between a theatrical monologue and just talking to yourself – a monologist is aware of the audience, speaks to them, connects with them. Priti’s discourse, at first with a phone and then with nothing, gives her no support, no connection, just her own power of imagination embodying another someone. It’s a hard thing to do. Priti Colbeck does it very well indeed.

But…

This is a piece about a fractured relationship and a desperate woman, who may or may not have attempted suicide so she is in a featureless room with an IV drip on a stand and a thousand and one things to fiddle with. There are wigs, there’s a Christmas tree, there is an assortment of make-up items, there’s a deck of cards. The woman meanders round the room fiddling with stuff while talking. It would appear to be quite carefully blocked, so yet another praiseworthy aspect of Ms. Colbeck’s performance, but the character is just fiddling, filling the time. The items may have symbolic significance; since this is derived from a Cocteau script that seems quite likely, but the symbolism isn’t apparent. The only prop that earns its place is a pack of cigarettes that are taken up, thrown away, scrabbled for in desperation, and finally flung across the stage. The Christmas tree never even gets fiddled with, it just sits there murmuring “I’m going to be important, me…”. But it never is.

Very nicely acted, very carefully blocked, very long, fairly inconsequential. The character of the (woman) lover who has caused the protagonist such pain is undefined, the agony of loss is apparent but unresolved, the half of the conversation we hear is unspecific. There may be another woman. There may not. It’s quite hard to care.

Jean Cocteau’s THE HUMAN VOICE

Adapted by Daniel Raggett

Directed by David Fairs

Performed by Priti Colbeck

Produced by Kean Street Productions Ltd

At White Bear Theatre, Kennington

Box Office https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-human-voice

Reviewed by Chris Lilly