The Human Voice – King’s Arms, Salford
The insistence of a telephone ringing can be annoying, “Answer me! Answer me!”, it cries. Yet when it stops and there is silence, that is worse.
A phone call is the perfect metaphor for a play about disconnection. Callers can be cut off and find themselves shouting into the void, searching for someone to talk to. We all want to find someone with whom we can connect.
Jean Cocteau saw the theatrical benefit of the phone call with his play La Voix Humaine in 1930. At that time the telephone was the only way for two people to communicate at a distance. The main problem with adapting the play and setting it in the present day is that there are now so many ways for two people to “talk” to each other that the last way they would do it is to speak over a landline.
However, I am willin...
