The Sound Inside @ Kitchen Dog Theater
Photos by Jordan Fraker
—Reviewed by Jill Sweeney
It’s such a specific pleasure to go into a show you know nothing about—and find yourself enraptured. It feels like being privy to a particularly juicy secret.
Such was my evening seeing Kitchen Dog Theater’s regional premiere of Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside (a 2020 Outer Critics Circle Honoree for Outstanding New Broadway Play), a gorgeously literary two-hander whose twists and turns felt both surprising and inevitable, as in the best novels. It’s been a dog’s age (sorry) since I’ve had the pleasure of wending my way to KDT, but this production, boasting a stellar cast and striking production design, reminded me just what I’ve been missing.
The play opens on Bella (company member Karen Parrish)—a fifty-ish professor of creative writing who, in blatant defiance of her advice to her students not to overly describe their characters, lays out the details of her life: her failed literary aspirations, her isolation, her weakness for a good steak, and her terminal cancer diagnosis.
Parrish’s performance is beautifully spare, reciting the facts of Bella’s life with a sort of wry dispassion, asserting the distance she maintains between herself and the audience. This distance falters, however, in the face of freshman Christopher (Parker Hill), awkward but tenacious, who pushes past Bella’s walls with his passion for writing and forges a strange but intense connection with Bella that will change the trajectories of both their lives.
The chemistry between Parrish and Hill—making his professional debut in this piece with the assurance of a much more seasoned actor—is palpable but hard to pin down, teetering at times on sexual but never quite tipping over into it. Parrish allows Bella to blossom under Christopher’s attention, but both actors always seem acutely aware of the power dynamics at play, with Parrish shifting, chameleon-like, between the roles of mother, mentor, friend, and almost-lover without missing a step.
She’s ferociously unself-pitying. That makes the moments when she does let the audience in (as in her heart-wrenching description of her mother’s own losing battle with cancer) hit all the harder. But she brings the funny to Bella’s more bawdy, earthy lines. An early description of her conception of God as one who’s “selfish and smokes a pipe and looks like a perverted eighteenth-century French novelist”—spoken with a naughty, satisfied glee—left the audience guffawing.
Playwright Rapp’s dialogue will probably be described by some as over-written—hard not to be when writing about writing about writing. But to me, it had the dense and satisfying chewiness of the best prose. A section where Hill suddenly takes over the narrative, reading the conclusion from Bella’s only semi-successful piece of fiction, was just the barest taste of a story I’d gladly lose a weekend over, and just one of the shifts in narration that perpetually pulled the audience close, then pushed us out again.
I was almost convinced mid-way through the play that Hill and director Tina Parker had gone the wrong way with Christopher’s character, that Hill was underplaying him to the point of opacity. Thankfully, by the play’s end I realized I was dead wrong. Hill paints a vivid portrait of a young man lacking in social skills but full of promise and starving for connection. We don’t always know what he’s thinking: that’s precisely the point.
You’re visually bowled over with literature upon entering the theater: set designer Will Turbyne has created an avalanche of books onstage. Piles of them (literally) are inescapably present wherever you look, whether to Bella’s spartan office and cozy home, or at the artfully crafted bird sculptures (made from books) suspended above the action. All of it all pairs well with Lisa Miller’s unobtrusive but effective lighting design to take the audience a step outside of reality.
KDT has performed a beautiful act of theatrical alchemy here, bringing together a vibrant script and powerful performances to create theater gold. To say more would honestly be gilding the lily—this one’s can’t-miss, folks, especially for the book nerd in your life.
WHEN: Through November 20th
WHERE: 2600 N Stemmons Fwy, Suite 180, Dallas
