Review: Speaking in Tongues at Heath Ledger Theatre

Speaking in Tongues at Heath Ledger Theatre
Thursday, September 4, 2025

Speaking in Tongues, written by WA playwright Andrew Bovell and first performed thirty years ago, is the basis for the 2001 film Lantana. However, while the movie is a fairly straightforward suburban noir, the play is much weirder, with layers of doubling and looping the film doesn’t capture, heightened by the multiple roles played by each actor. Incredibly intricate and skilfully executed, it portrays a complex overlaying of stories illuminating the themes of desire, adultery, regret and trust within marriages and relationships.

The play opens with a stunning scene in which two couples enter hotel rooms about to have adulterous one-night stands with a stranger. The two scenes play out with simultaneous dialogue, the same lines spoken by two characters at once, in different contexts. This both shows the ordinary, repeated nature of this kind of experience while also highlighting the differences between couples when certain lines pop out of the text when spoken by only one character.

It is an efficient form of exposition, as we quickly learn the outlines of each character and the shape of their marriage, with multiple stories told at once. In less capable hands this could be gimmicky or incomprehensible, but the cast, under the direction of Humphrey Bower, executes it perfectly, so the audience is clearly absorbed, their attention steadily held throughout this intricate opening.

The rest of act one focuses on the aftermath of that night and introduces mystery elements of a missing woman and a possibly missing man, both of whom leave behind shoes as enigmatic clues to their fate. In act two, the actors take on different roles, and the story so far is replayed and extended from multiple different points of view, with the focus shifting to the missing persons.

The play is set in the nineties, and an answering machine and glowing orange Telstra phone box are essential to the plot, but the way that the legacy of trauma and violence are dealt with still feels contemporary. Themes of trust and vulnerability are probed from different angles, with no easy answers or obvious morals. A shared dream sequence of a nightmare in the bush and echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock make this feel like a thoroughly Australian story, with surrealist overtones of David Lynch.

The staging by Fiona Bruce is sparse, with little in terms of set design other than isolated pieces of furniture lowered from the ceiling—a bed or a couch—suggesting a setting and bringing intense focus to the dialogue. The sound design of Ash Gibson Greig features loud, isolated bursts of sensual Latin ballads, underlining the characters’ longing and sexuality, interspersed with eerie background music to pull the audience back into the murder mystery side of the story. Video projections by Mark Haslam provide uncanny versions of the Australian landscape that are particularly effective during the dream sequence.

All four cast members, Matt Edgerton, Luke Hewitt, Catherine Moore and Alexandria Steffensen, are extremely strong, playing multiple roles, timing their simultaneous lines precisely, and infusing characters with complex emotions and revealing physicality. The dance between them as they come together, break apart, and come back together in different formations is central to the success of this production, which is well worth seeing.

Speaking in Tongues is showing at the State Theatre Centre until Sunday, September 14.

SAM ROSENFELD