The most interesting aspect of Andrew Bovell’s play Speaking in Tongues from an analytical perspective is what most reviewers find problematic from a critical perspective. But first: a little background. The play features nine difference characters which are all played by just four different actors. (If that seems a little off, it is easily enough explained: one of the male actors plays three instead of just two roles.) The interconnectedness of real life in the way the parts are spread around is reflected in the narrative itself in which the story of two married couples cheating (or almost doing so) with each other’s spouses becomes an exercise in repetition of dialogue. Then, later on, a few characters which are discussed by these married couples actually become realized as genuine characters living within the same reality. Confusing? Sure, but not nearly as much as, say, Ocean’s Twelve.
It is not that the commingling of characters and actors, stories told and stories played out, character disappearing and reappearing is confusing that has stimulated some of the lackluster critical responses to the play itself generally and individual productions specifically. The problem is it is a play not just based upon, but utterly depended upon a foundation of commonality, repetition, similarity and recognition. The two spouse-swapping couples that form the bulk of Part One are not particularly distinguishable from each other. The primary difference is that one of the mismatched adulterers go through with the sin while the other doesn’t. Despite this, some of the dialogue which informs that actions of completed or uncompleted adultery is identical. Such is the defining pattern throughout the play even as the characters and situations change. One notoriously bad review referred to its cast of characters as “nine bores” in the service of a boring story. That is a little harsh, but ultimately there is a nugget of purposeful truth: these are not characters defined to be different nor is the story worked out to be the stuff of wildly imaginative shenanigans.
What negativity the play produces critically is that all this construction of similarities between characters and situations does not lead to a grandly encompassing revelation of a hugely significantly thematic statement. There is no declaration of meaning at the end. The ending is, in fact, just another repetition of a commonly shared reality: a guy leaving a message on an answering machine for a former lover to pick up the phone. It is an ending perfectly in keeping with all that has come before: most of the audience will sense the familiarity in one way or another. They will have been the person leaving the message or the person ignoring the message or, possibly, a third party hearing either the message being left or the message being record. Whatever the reality, it is a shared reality. And that, ultimately, is the analytical point of the whole thing.
From the opening scene of two couples dancing to that final message left on a machine, everything that happens in between carries the hint of familiarity. Even if the details are not exact—not everybody has been tempted to such a degree by the lure of an adulterous affair—they will be familiar with it through representation. Words are repeated, situations are repeated, familiar faces appear as completely new and different characters…all the world is a persistent state of repetition. The narrative is saying, essentially, we are all the same. But it is also saying that we do not all react the same way to the same events. The audience is not expected to agree; in fact, they are likely being stimulated to argue over certain points from their perspective. Because no matter how familiar absolutely everything may be, we do not as a mass grouping of species react in the same way. For instance, some people seem to be absolutely sure they know exactly what happens in Ocean’s Twelve. And yet so few are actually able to adequately explain it to another.
