The Hush, The Shed - theatre review

Two or three times The Hush edges towards seductiveness, even beauty, yet for much of its hour-long duration it feels like the prelude to something bigger and more compelling
1/2
31 July 2013

Matthew Herbert is a genuinely unconventional musician, a composer and politically engaged eccentric who reputedly used a bag of crisps as an instrument at his first ever gig. He describes The Hush as "an attempt to welcome sound into the theatre". The point being, of course, that so often sound at the theatre is unwelcome — ringing phones, the rustling of sweet wrappers, puerile commentary and endless coughing.

The show, conceived by Herbert with Ben Power and then devised with input from others, is a hybrid of play, installation and offbeat concert. Tobias Menzies and Susannah Wise bring poise and sensitivity to the piece’s two characters, for whom sounds evoke memories yet also complicate them.

The mission is clear: to get us to listen more carefully and discerningly. The dense soundscape owes a good deal to the deft work of onstage Foley artists Ruth Sullivan and Barnaby Smyth. But there’s a limit to how much interest one can find in the different ways a person drags on a cigarette or the various textures of traffic noise.

The Hush production shot - National Theatre
Pic: Simon Kane

Two or three times The Hush edges towards seductiveness, even beauty, yet for much of its hour-long duration it feels like the prelude to something bigger and more compelling. Herbert wants to make sound, which is so often a neglected component of theatre, the most salient part of it. But here the results are modest. The request on arrival that theatregoers remove their shoes, which are then slotted into Sarah Hopper’s design, sets the tone for the show: it’s an intriguing gesture that doesn’t actually achieve much.

Until August 3 (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk)

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