The Human Voice

by Jean Cocteau

seen at the Harold Pinter Theatre on 6 April 2022

Ivo van Hove directs Ruth Wilson in this adaptation of Jean Cocteau's 1930 play La Voix Humaine; Wilson is encased in a featureless glass box (designed by van Hove's usual collaborator Jan Versweyweld) symbolising the crushing emptiness of her life as she talks for one last time on the telephone with a lover who has abandoned her.

The conversation begins with the frustrations of crossed lines. Though we hear only the woman's side of the exchange it is clear enough when she is dealing with a stranger who is inadvertently interrupting this painful call, and when she is addressing the now absconding partner. For much of the time she is putting up a brave front, being 'understanding' and 'forgiving' and refusing to blame anyone but herself, but beneath this surface brightness is a deep despair and an awful agony. Occasionally her anger and pain break through, but for most of the time we witness the brittle attempt to master a catastrophic emotional upheaval. Ruth Wilson, a fine actress who has worked with van Hove before (in a provocative Hedda Gabler - see my review of January 2017) pulls out all the stops here, though she is somewhat hampered by the distancing effect of the staging.

The idea of a telephone system in which complete strangers can accidentally find themselves talking with one another must seem almost fantastical to a modern audience. The characterisation of the woman, and in particular the portrayal of her as self-blaming and always ready to exonerate the partner who has abandoned her, has struck reviewers as dated and unsatisfactory. Even with the modern emphasis on personal freedom and self-valorisation, however, the experience of an unwanted breakup can wreak havoc and bring to the fore all manner of unwanted and supposedly outdated emotions, so perhaps these criticisms are rather beside the point.

Nonetheless there is something about this production which mutes the impact of all this distress. The fact that there is a large glass panel separating the audience from the actor inevitably creates a distance, and the actor's voice is clearly augmented electronically in the auditorium. Given that the piece is effectively a monologue, and that Ruth Wilson takes advantage of the arrangement to veer from bright hysterics to an almost voiceless whisper, this technical decision is not as awkward as it can be, but it still removes one of the basic parts of a theatrical experience, and makes what we see more of a spectacle than a direct encounter with human experience. It is very skilled but not entirely involving.

On the other hand, the style does provide for some intriguing ambiguities. For a good part of the time it is not entirely clear whether the woman is actually speaking to anyone at all, as the telephone handset lies forgotten at her feet while she continues to talk. Perhaps we are just privy to her innermost thoughts. Also the breaking up and reconnection of the calls raise the possibility that the partner is already with someone else; at one point in her frantic desire to keep the conversation going she makes a phone call herself (presumbly to a familiar number) only to be told that the ex-partner is not there, and yet almost immediately afterwards she has an incoming call and resumes talking. This small episode is another aspect of the betrayal that she can hardly bring herself to acknowledge, and after only a momnt's hesitation she of course does not offer any recrimination or demand an explanation. These subtleties are what makes Ruth Wilson's performance so effective even if the character's behaviour fails to live up to modern standards of how an independent woman should behave. After all, the play is almost a century old and pain is still pain.