Honest, entrancing, and utterly compelling. The Silent Treatment is must-see theatre from a dazzlingly talented performer at the height of her powers.
📍Summerhall – Anatomy Lecture Theatre
📅 Aug 3-14, 16-21, 23-28
🕖 1:50pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hour
👥 Creator/Producer/Co-Music Writer: Sarah-Louise Young
🎥 Director: Sioned Jones
🎵 Music design/Co-Music Writer: Christopher Ash
💃 Movement Consultant: Lucie Pankhurst
💰 From £8.00 (Preview), £10.00 thereafter
🎂 14+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet
‘…the body remembers what the mind forgets’ sings Sarah-Louise Young, baring her decades’ long struggles with voice-loss, and of the muffled screams which first damaged her vocal cords when sexually assaulted as a child. This is Sarah-Louise’s own life made theatre; a show born of intimate truth.
Told that surgery was a last resort, Sarah-Louise would retreat into a quasi-monkish life of abstinence to preserve her professional career. No cheese. Zero booze. No whispering. Regular voice steaming. Therapy.
And absolutely never telling anyone there was a problem.
None of the above had the least effect on her traitorous vocal cords, but the years of intense self-reflection did permit her to join the dots of her existence.
Assured it was career suicide to publicize the surgery which finally freed her vocal folds from depredations of twin cysts, Sarah Louise has instead made it the subject of her 2022 Fringe show. Simply put, Sarah-Louise is done with shame. She’s done with feeling sorry for the man who assaulted her, and absolutely refuses to hide her recovery from a problem which plagues thousands of professional singers.
Which is certainly the basis for a timely, uplifting herstory…but The Silent Treatment is much more.
This is magical storytelling from a multi-talented, and immensely likeable performer. Puppetry, physical theatre, and of course song — Sarah-Louse is a glorious singer — combine to bring the audience inside the narrative, there to be amazed, amused, and most of all entertained. There are no gadgets here, no tricks: just one woman, a sparkly scarf, a microphone, a bubbling imagination, an open soul, and a fantastic voice.
Bravo to director, Sioned Jones, for enabling Sarah-Louise to stand so impressively, and entrancingly in her own power. Never before has an anthropomorphised diaphragm clowned quite so funnily, and enchantingly over the vocal virtues of the orgasm.
Physically, anyone who’s seen the absolutely fabulous An Evening Without Kate Bush, knows Sarah-Louise has the moves. Still, movement consultant, Lucie Pankhurst appears to have brought a fresh, and intensely personal dynamic to her movement.
The Silent Treatment is stitched together with the story of a mermaid losing her voice to a scurrilous pirate, and her ultimate victory over the forces seeking to silence not just her, but all of us. It’s entirely reasonable then, that Young & musical collaborator Christopher Ash have speckled proceedings with musical numbers one part Lerner & Loewe, one part Disney, and one part Broadway anthem.
The QR’s only ‘complaint’ is that Sarah-Louse doesn’t sing quite enough, but then the very best theatre always leaves the audience wanting more.
(Image Credit: Steve Ullathorne)
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Am I getting this right: Sarah-Louise is the character in a play, and Lucie Pankhurst is the actor? Or is Sarah-Louise the performer, and Lucie a coach?
It sounds fabulous. For personal reasons: the pandemic brought all my singing to a halt – and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get any reasonable amount of that voice back, as we’re STILL not congregating in closed spaces to sing with others, and it’s not something I do alone, and we haven’t been to church in person since 2019.
Just have to go at it slow, and hope the now raspy voice isn’t caused by vocal cords with cysts. It would be fun and eye-opening to see this one.
HI Alicia, no, it’s all Sarah-Louise, telling her own, true story, ably assisted by some very talented professionals who’ve helped create the show. 🙂