Review: Dialogues from Babel @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

By WJQuinn Mar 6, 2022 11:01 AM

An intriguing, and worthy endeavour, if subject to a little exaptation.

📍 Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 FRI 04 MAR 2022
🕖 7.30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 90 minutes (no interval)
👥 Dramaturg: Philip Howard
👥 Direction: Mary Robson
🎭 Reserved seating, and access arrangements available through contact with box office

Dialogues from Babel, a quasi-verbatim piece of theatre, assembled by dramaturg Philip Howard, and exploring the phenomenon of voice hearing premiered this past Friday the 4th March 2022, for the first of only 2 performances, the second of which will take place on the 7th March, in Newcastle. The result of a long collaboration between the the Durham University – Hearing the Voice study, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s – Writers Inner Voices project, thousands of hours of testimony from voice-hearers, as well as authors, were made available to Philip in order for the play’s realisation.

The result is a woven tapestry of stories, each illustrative of markedly differing experiences, spanning historical religious testimony, and contemporaneous witness. Anchoring the narrative is the character of Aiden (played by Ali Watt), an academic researcher conducting interviews with individuals who have volunteered to share their experiences of voice-hearing. Each interaction is expressly based on the thousands of hours of recorded dialogue between Durham academic Dr Ben Alderson-Day and voice-hearers as part of the Hearing the Voice project.

A rehearsed reading, Dialogues from Babel is nonetheless a polished piece of theatre, as the cast shift seats, to join, and leave Aiden’s interview rooms which occupy the centre-foreground. At times testimonies are layered one against another, as Howard reaches for commonalities between the socially validated author’s experience of their characters, and the typically pathologized experience of those who hear voices without the “excuse” of creating art.

Relationships will develop between the studiously impartial, yet deeply empathic academic, and those who talk with him. Two predominate, the first with Wes (Elliot Baxter) a young man who hears two distinct voices: one incessantly furious, the other quieter and protective, whilst simultaneously suffering from a sense that the world around him is phony, a Truman Show – esque sham. With time and growing trust, Wes will open up more and more to Aiden, and to the academic’s surprise develop gratitude for the simple, but somewhat healing facility of being listened to.

The second central relationship forms between Aiden and Nasrin (Houda Echoafni), author, and grieving widow. Not part of the Hearing the Voice project, she and the academic are free to develop a friendship, and with that closeness, confidences which build to a final, startling revelation which bridges both worlds, voice-hearer, and writer. This strand of the the narrative is the most fictionalised element of the play, though still solidly based in written testimony.

Dialogues from Babel is a highly valuable work, and perhaps its most crucial message is to negate the view of voice-hearing as a de-facto illness, or pathology. Yes, voice-hearers can find their experiences highly distressing, and the phenomenon may indeed arise through psychological trauma, but many, perhaps most, still negotiate life competently, and and with a rational view of their complex interior life. Authors, particularly those whose creativity tends towards a stream of consciousness, a tap which refuses to switch off once opened, may even find their experiences more punishing, without ever being directed towards a therapist.

That said, the relationship between Aiden and Nasrin did come across as straying towards a love story. Not a romance, but certainly a friendship which has deepened beyond artifice, and which might offer grounds for romance to follow. Further, the final revelation though understandable as a unifying event betwixt voice-hearing and author’s experiences, feels a mote contrived and tips matters towards, if not into melodrama.

When quizzed on this in the short Q&A which followed the reading, Howard denied this reading, suggesting that any appearance of such was simply the result of the placing of this revelatory interaction within the larger work. No doubt this is the case, and so it might be useful to invoke the term, “exaptation” used in evolutionary biology to describe physical features such as feathers. Feathers were almost certainly first evolved in response to a need to stay warm, and to show off for potential mates; they facilitated flight purely incidentally. Similarly whilst the verbatim texts employed in this particular strand of the play contained no directional intimacy, once placed into actors’ hands, and inside a larger creative work, a transformation of meaning was never impossible.

Consistently, the warm laughter of the auditorium in response to the question suggests an intimation of meaningful intimacy was a common view nonetheless. Indeed, a slightly flushed Ben, from whose mouth first uttered Aiden’s script, added that he too was “surprised by the love story.”

Returning to the production itself, the entire cast gave an exceedingly competent account of themselves, particularly Baxter whose performance is effortlessly natural, and entirely personable. Ali Watt also manages to create a character entirely separate from the academic whose words he is recounting, exposing through action, and subtle movement, a complex inner life behind a strenuously impartial exterior.

Director Mary Robson runs a tight ship, and the result is more than a rehearsed reading, closer to a semi-staged, if minimal production. R J McConnell’s sound design is effective, but never excessive, helping to hint at interior experiences without presuming to define them.

Dialogues from Babel is a smart, worthwhile play, and illustrative of the enlightening power of collaboration between creative and investigative disciplines when dealing with multifaceted phenomena. It will educate many viewers’ ideas on what it means to hear voices, dispelling notions of shame, opening dialogue, and empowering progress.