REVIEW: The Sound Inside at Coal Mine Theatre
iPhoto caption: Photo by Tim Leyes
Content warning: this review contains explicit discussion of suicide and terminal illness. This review also contains spoilers.
It’s not often my separate jobs as a breaking news reporter and theatre critic converge the way they have this week, echoing each other and fostering new levels of emotional heft on both sides of the journalistic spectrum.
The short version: a GTA man has been accused of mailing a lethal substance around the world for the purpose of suicide. The legal proceedings are in their early stages, but the case has revealed a dark side of the internet, where forums about taking one’s own life offer “advice” and links to illicit marketplaces.
By their very nature, these corners of the web tend to be anonymous.
But in The Sound Inside, Adam Rapp’s painful, neurotic play at Coal Mine Theatre, we get to know one user of the suicide forums: Bella Baird, a middle-aged professor dying of cancer and unwilling to proceed with chemotherapy.
The ongoing Toronto case, which I cover in detail at my other job, is a difficult story with no end in sight, but The Sound Inside brings a disturbing topic some surprising humanity — and it does so with impeccable craft.
Bella, played sharply and generously by Moya O’Connell, loves books — probably more than she loves people. She teaches English literature at Yale, and by her own assessment, believes a good writer introduces their protagonist with no more than one or two physical details. That physical detail here is a green cardigan, the easily removable wall between Bella’s tumored stomach and the outside world.
One member of that outside world is her student, Christopher Dunn, played here by the piercing Aidan Correia. Christopher is a freshman, annoying from the first moment we meet him but somehow alluring, too, in his encyclopaedic knowledge of Dostoevsky. Christopher thinks often of endings — of deaths — and at one point he seems completely consumed by how his fledgling novel might end. Bella, too, cares deeply about that novel, sensing the resonances between its protagonist and the very young adult just a few feet away from her.
Bella and Christopher are decades apart in age. There is no amount of mental calculus that can justify the intimate, profound relationship beginning to form between them.
But form the relationship does. The conversation flows from books to wine to books again, in an easy rhythm reminiscent of the strong-but-not-sexual, female-teacher-male-student dynamic of Jordan Tannahill’s The Listeners. The relationship between Bella and Christopher is inarguably wrong, or at least inappropriate — but the precise nature of that transgression isn’t revealed until late in the play, when Bella asks of Christopher an impossible, earth-shattering favour.
The Sound Inside is a tough, tough watch (and its difficult themes are amply forewarned by Coal Mine’s new content warnings). Rapp is a skilled and sadistic playwright, unafraid to twist his linguistic knife into the audience as Bella hops between direct address and naturalistic dialogue with Christopher, littering epigraphs and grammatical corrections as she speaks.
What makes Leora Morris’ direction so effective is the extent to which we can’t feel it in the audience — it’s at times as if the play hasn’t been directed at all, just two people and a desk on Wes Babcock’s stark set. Unusually for the Coal Mine, The Sound Inside has been staged in a proscenium formation, a surprisingly (but perhaps appropriately, given Bella’s reverence for written history) traditional choice. Morris gets out of the way of her actors and Rapp’s writing, and the effect is stunning: there’s no aesthetic or intellectual fluff between the audience and the story, and that’s exactly as it should be.
In a way, The Sound Inside is classic Coal Mine, a startlingly weighty imported play produced with integrity and verve. But the production is also refreshingly brave in its refusal to succumb to the pretentiousness of its characters — where Rapp’s language occasionally flounders, Morris’ aesthetics and killer actors never do. An easy night at the theatre it is not, but The Sound Inside is for me the highlight of Coal Mine’s season so far.
The Sound Inside runs at Coal Mine Theatre through May 28. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Aisling Murphy
Aisling is Intermission's former senior editor and the theatre reporter for the Globe and Mail. She likes British playwright Sarah Kane, most songs by Taylor Swift, and her cats, Fig and June. She was a 2024 fellow at the National Critics Institute in Waterford, CT.
LEARN MORE
iPhoto caption: Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh.
REVIEW: In Shedding a Skin at Buddies, a mistreated office worker screams back
Vanessa Sears’ remarkable performance guides the audience through the emotional journeys of two Black British women from different generations.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Michael Cooper.
REVIEW: William Kentridge’s visually extreme Wozzeck disorients at the COC
Instead of merely charting its title character’s fall, this Wozzeck aims to leave its audience in a similarly troubled state.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Elana Emer.
REVIEW: Coal Mine Theatre’s Job is terrifyingly evocative and layered with suspense
Playwright Max Wolf Friedlich unpacks tensions around age, gender, politics, race, and class, painting a truthful yet unflattering portrait of the world we live in today.
iPhoto caption: The cast of Flex. Photo by Elana Emer.
REVIEW: Flex delivers a stirring portrait of ambition, girlhood, and loyalty
The train is only as strong as its weakest link — and in Flex, every player on and offstage pulls with heart, grit, wit, and charm.
iPhoto caption: Pictured (L to R): Jake Epstein as Frank, Isabella Esler as Alice. Photo by Michael Cooper.
REVIEW: Britta Johnson’s Life After shimmers in large-scale Mirvish transfer
The show’s tender excavation of grief’s ambiguities hasn’t lost any power in its journey to a bigger house; in fact, it’s clearer than ever.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Jae Yang.
REVIEW: Tarragon’s wonderful Benevolence reflects on diaspora, community, and place
Playwright-performer Kevin Matthew Wong’s script is heartfelt, conversational, and at times poetic, moving effortlessly between heavier moments of grief and lighter moments of joy and humour.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Aisling Murphy.
In the darkest months of Yukon winter, it’s all about the Sun Room
I’m here for a week in January as a guest of Nakai Theatre, a hub for theatrical experimentation and outside-the-box programming in Canada’s westernmost territory.
Armchairs, tattoos, and an online theatre magazine
When I started at Intermission, my world was limited to the confines of an armchair. Arts journalism was a high it felt dangerously fruitless to chase. The life stretched ahead of me was amorphous and frightening, a chasm filled with hand sanitizer and immigration concerns. It was worth crying over a spilled kombucha and scrubbing at the stain.
iPhoto caption: Liz Appel headshot courtesy of Liz Appel.
Five questions with Wights playwright Liz Appel
Intermission spoke with Appel over email for a brief Q&A about Wights, now playing at Crow’s Theatre until February 9.
Call for applications: Publishing and editorial assistant
Intermission Magazine is seeking a dynamic and collaborative individual to join our team.
iPhoto caption: What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab
Announcing What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab
What Writing Can Do is timed to coincide with the Grand and Theatre Aquarius’ co-production of Waitress, which will serve as a jumping-off point for discussions throughout the Lab.
iPhoto caption: A Christmas Story production still by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: A Christmas Story feels fresh at Theatre Aquarius
If you want to catch A Christmas Story before it closes, good luck — the show is close to sold out, and with the talent on that stage, it’s not hard to see why.
Comments