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8/16/2019 La Voix Humaine Theatre Review
1/2
PETER TAGGART
La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice)
When the great filmmaker and humourist Nora Ephron passed last week, a quote of hers started
doing the rounds of social media – “Be the heroine of your own life, not the victim”. Just two days
after her death, in the middle of Motherboard Production’s edgy reimagination of Jean Cocteau’s
1930 masterpiece La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice), the third play of La Boite’s indie season, I
couldn’t help but be reminded of the quote. Cocteau gives us a woman attempting to have one last
phone conversation with her former lover, before he is to be married. Frequently interrupted by
drop-outs and crackling distortion down the line, we voyeuristically look upon a woman struggling to
become the heroine of her own life, while still clearly the victim of a love affair that can no longer
be.
Set in a small apartment in Paris, the conversation is entirely one-sided. We never see or hear the
man on the other side of the phone. We are only privy to the woman’s reactions and her building
anxiety and desperation, Director Dave Sleswick gives us three women in the one role (Erica Field,
Noa Rotem and Liesel Zink) and tips out a grandiose bag of theatrical tricks, weaving dance and text
and music and video into the work and addressing the needs of a modern audience, accustomed to a
certain degree of audio/visual stimulation.
The set is an open room with doors at either. It’s modern and clean and totally sparse, like someone
robbed a lounge display in IKEA. Made possible by Pozible, the ever-popular crowd funding website,the set may be almost bare, but it’s extremely clever in its simplicity. Screen doors at the back of
stage open and close, allowing video and slides to be projected from behind and strobe lighting
borders the stage, occasionally flashing, illuminating the actors faces from below. Credit must go to
Brad Jennings and Steven Maxwell for the frequent and smooth incorporation of multimedia and to
Verity Hampson, for an incredibly smart lighting design.
Erica Field is such a bold performer and manages to perfectly execute balance between a totally
naturalistic vocal style and a sort-of vaudevillian physicality. Often her face is so expressive it seems
as if the words are mere accessories. She is a delight to watch. Noa Rotem delivers the majority of
her lines in Hebrew, with subtitles beamed onto curtains hanging above the set and the screen doorbehind her. At first it is distracting, even a little frustrating as our focus is forced to dart between the
action on stage and the words up above. However, Rotem is perhaps the most compelling when she
exposes us to the anger and madness her character experiences when cut off from her lover at the
other end of the wire. Though differences in personality tend to be subtle and few, Liesel Zink brings
a fragility and sexuality to her interpretation. Zink is particularly graceful on her feet, carrying us
through much of the modern dance throughout the play.
The choice to have stage directions and revealing elements of the story read out by Field at the
beginning and some of the dance pieces seemed unnecessary, though never long enough to become
truly tiresome. That said, Sleswick has delivered the most exciting production of La Boite’s indie
8/16/2019 La Voix Humaine Theatre Review
2/2
(and, perhaps, mainstage) season so far, creating a tragic, striking and effortlessly energetic work
that goes far beyond the devastation of poor phone reception.
Rating: Four Stars
La Boite Indie and Motherboard Productions present
La Voix Hum aine (The Human Voic e)
By Jean Cocteau
Directed by Dave Sleswick
Cast: Erica Field, Noa Rotem & Liesel Zink.
La Boite
June 27 – July 14, 2012.
For tickets call 07 3007 8600 or purchase online via laboite.com.au