It’s a play about writing and flows with words, words, words — and minimal action, yet one stays pretty much hooked in for most of its 90-minute run. The stage is sparsely set with a desk at each side and a couple of bookshelves at the rear against stark white walls. It beckons an audience member in ...
Curious Theatre is housed in a vintage 1910 church at 1080 Acoma St., in Denver’s Golden Triangle, and offers strong productions — usually of well-received contemporary plays that have not yet been performed in Denver ... which is a good thing in my view.
“The Sound Inside,” by well-recognized writer Adam Rapp, played on Broadway in 2020 and was nominated for both a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, which speaks well of its qualities. Language flows throughout this performance — it’s a pleasure to hear the dialogue. Mary Louise Parker, who played Bella on Broadway, did indeed win a Tony for her performance.
Director Sabin Epstein is a widely recognized director and educator, who was head of Performance Skills for the National Theatre Conservatory in Denver, Head of Acting for the Old Globe/University of San Diego MFA Actor Training Program and more. He has directed at a number of Shakespeare Festivals across the nation and at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
Accomplished local actress Diana Dresser, who plays Bella, a mid-career Yale writing professor, launches immediately into a reflection about her cancer diagnosis in a low-key conversational mode ... she chats with the audience in the beginning and is soon joined by a freshman student, Christopher (Mikah Conway), who arrives “without making an appointment.” He repeats this the next day. (Conway is a recent graduate of the strong University of Denver theatre program.)
Bella reminds him of this protocol and soon senses that he’s not much concerned about protocol. She also senses that he’s a writer in the making and tells him so. He wants to talk with her about his novel in process.
“Please don’t call security,” he begs. “I just wanted to tell you how much I liked the class.”
Her class begins with Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” and she remarks that many students tend to sympathize with the killer, which puzzles her.
Aside, she comments: “I did kind of get the feeling he just wants to hang out ...” She’s right ... he appears the next day and the next, with pages from his novel, which he’s typing on an old manual Corona. (A piece of equipment that seems to appear fairly often onstage.) He tells her the story of his novel in process.
She is a loner who has “written two collections of stories and an ‘underappreciated’” novel.
Eventually, she invites him to dinner. He says he bought her novel at the college bookstore and has read it a number of times. The night goes as you’ve guessed it would ... “In the morning, he’s gone,” she recalls ...
While the COVID-19 pandemic continues, public events frequently are canceled or rescheduled. Check with organizers before you go.
