Holden Street Theatres. 12 Aug 2026

 

Playwright Adam Rapp’s The Sound Inside is redolent with the most densely beautiful writing. A magnificent tour de force exploration of the literary and personal lives of Yale Professor Bella Baird (Michelle Nightingale) and nervy, louche but intelligent student Christopher Dunn ( Benji Riggs).

 

Rapp’s text is a complex one. Delivered at times in first person by Nightingale and Riggs, interposed with commentary.

 

It’s like experiencing a novel within a novel. There’s always this strange sense of crossing from reality to fiction and back as Baird remembers her interaction with this socially obtuse, yet intense would-be writer. Contrasts that with her personal life, literary life.

 

These two differing personalities linked by the world of letters; a professor staring cancer in the face, a student seeking certainty in the fictional, offer a journey into what it means to live, perhaps not to be really alive. Is ‘life’ a written achievement? Do ‘rules’ achieve anything?

 

Director Nick Fagan’s set design splits the space into three realms; Baird’s home, park space, and Baird’s office. Martin Smith’s lighting is sparsely functional.

 

Rapp’s text demands its interpreters rise to a significant challenge. Avoid letting it do the heavy work for you. Dig deeper to find expression beyond its seductive other worldly smoothness. There is a greater reality underneath this text. Beyond text, is a human condition that subsumes text.

 

Nick Fagan’s direction is functional to the surface intent of the work. Michele Nightingale’s performance is the better of the two. There’s a richness in her work. Benji Riggs offers a cut and paste lost young man not up to the complexity the character demands.

 

There are dual realities at play in this work. It demands they be addressed, even if that seems beyond a cast of two. As pleasant as the experience might be, not meeting that challenge makes for a less than fulfilling experience.

 

David O’Brien

 

When: 11 to 29 Aug

Where: Holden Street Theatres

Bookings: Holden Street Theatres