Hush, listen... Exploring the power of sound at the National Theatre

The Hush

The Shed, National Theatre, until 3 August

What is the true power of sound? What can it make you feel, remember, believe or hope for? This is the question asked by pioneering electronic music producer Matthew Herbert in his first foray into the theatrical world. We all know that a particular smell or a particular song can immediately transport you to a previous time or place, but if you isolate ambient noise and focus in on that, what kind of sonic journey can that take you on? And how can this help us appreciate the world we live in?

Herbert, together with NT associate director Ben Power, has created an avant-garde piece of theatre in which sound becomes a character, engaging with the actors, eliciting emotion and responding to and shaping the dialogue. Two foley artists stand on a balcony above the set, creating a variety of subtle sounds with which the performers, Tobias Menzies and Susannah Wise, interact below. From purposeful footsteps falling on a tray of gravel to a lapping lake conjured by hands splashing in a glass tank, they provide a soundtrack to Tobias and Susannah’s past and potentially future lives. This aural illusion is conjured within an apparent sound studio, that may also be a kind of therapy centre, or perhaps a futuristic facility to which people can come to recreate happy memories from a bank of sounds that has been preserved in an otherwise dystopian world. Herbert lets you come to your own conclusions.

The beauty of having the foley live on stage is that you are torn between watching the passions of the actors and the actions of the sound-makers. Its presence makes every moment feel enhanced and vividly realised, yet somehow also artificial, laden with the irony that none of what the characters experience is real. There is a distinct sense of pathos throughout the whole piece, precisely because of this dialectic between the invocation of desired memories and the production of actual sounds. Because these are made with the most mundane of objects, they simultaneously create and confound the fantasy.

Herbert seems to be examining the future of our fractured world – these soundbites, however accurately crafted, can never come together to be an enduring, meaningful, tangible whole. Are we destined to remember our perceived halcyon days by trying vainly to record, sample, index and replay every single decibel of sound, every byte of data? In these days of virtual realities and cyber socialising, should we instead be trying to experience life in reality and not expect every sense to be at our fingertips whenever we click our fingers, or a button? You can go and see The Hush and ask yourself these questions. And you can also experience it on a purely sensory level, appreciating the technical prowess of those who manipulate sound and valuing the sonic experience in a way you may never have before. It’s worth going along with open ears just for that.

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