Even Stillness

Head off to the Soho Theatre, “wake up!” and see that our modern life is perhaps not all it is cracked up to be: no, I am not pointing out flaws in the Soho Theatre – it is actually a rather nice example of London’s contemporary venues – but this production of Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against A Brick Wall makes us wonder whether our life today really has any meaning, or whether everything we do is empty?

I took my seat in front of the set, presented as a conventional everyday flat: sofa, TV, kitchen, shelves. The lights blackout. Nothing is seen. Nothing is heard. The lights come up, and a man and a woman stand in their underwear at both ends of the front of the stage. They talk about their morning routine and the rush to work, what their days will entail and about each other – but never to one another. At the start we see the couple cemented in the routine of social media and life-controlling technology, along with the ordinary challenges most people face in their daily lives that are never really questioned: yet their minds start to open or even disintegrate in the face of our modern culture, and they question if they could challenge these oppressive conformities.

The play takes the form of two large soliloquies, as both characters narrate to the audience the thoughts of their day: they rarely speak to each other, and when they do the dialogue with the other person is mostly referenced in the third person. Brad Birch, the playwright, has cleverly written like this so the audience can peek into the points of view of two ordinary lives, and see how their thoughts are not as simple as their repetitive routines appear. Director Nadia Latif potently uses the characters’ clothing and body language to symbolise firstly how they are robotic slaves to the conventional modern day life, and then their process to rebellion against what they once thought was normal. The “Him” character, played by Joe Dempsie, starts off as an average man who wears a neatly-ironed suit to work and does not question much, other than wondering whether the intern thinks he is “a c*nt”; yet he eventually stops caring about what he looks like, wearing an unkempt suit, as he questions the reason behind everything. This development also appears in “Her” played by Lara Rossi, and this physical metaphor complements Birch’s writing.

Dempsie and Rossi both perform as if they are not acting, as they are so convincing with their words. It feels just like they are sitting down with the audience to have a chat about the trials and tribulations of simple everyday life in first world countries: yet at the same time they manage to get across the passion and meaning behind what they say, letting the audience be pulled in by the poetic form of the dialogue, which makes them feel quite uneasy about how they live their personal lives.

This play did not lose my attention for a second, as it felt as if all of us were being put on trial as a society who rarely question the way our lives are structured, or why we conform to such oppressions when they do not seem to have any meaning. Yet Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against a Brick Wall also reminds us that the intangible feeling of love is the reason we work through our survival regimes of going to work to pay the bills; however, can our relationships survive without the stability of our normal, everyday lives? Does conforming keep us alive and well?

Despite this play being quite mind-aching and glum – it enhances every little detail of the world around you, so that I left the theatre noticing everything and questioning its meaning – I still suggest many of you see it as the words are written so beautifully, with beaming metaphors based on our modern world ringing in your ears all the way through. I also left with hope and evidence that there is, in fact, meaning to why so many of us spend our lives indulging in theatre.

Even Stillness Breathes Softly Against a Brick Wall is playing at the Soho Theatre until 14 June. For more information and tickets, see the Soho Theatre website.

Photography by Richard Davenport.