Theatre review: The Human Voice

I've loved a lot of Ivo van Hove's work but I'm far from finding him faultless - some of his screen-to-stage adaptations have been positively soporific, and the David Bowie musical is just a baffled question mark in my memory - so while I hope for the best, I don't assume every one of his shows will knock it out of the park. And while his reunion with Ruth Wilson for a Jean Cocteau monologue had a lot of anticipation behind it, sadly it goes very much into the other column of the director's work. In The Human Voice, Wilson plays a woman on the phone to her ex-boyfriend soon after their breakup; he's moved out of her apartment, but she still has a few of his things (including his dog) to send to him. He's also promised her one last conversation - although she found out he was having an affair and anticipated that he would leave her a few weeks before it happened, she's still not adjusted at all to the idea of being without him.

The trouble is I couldn't give less of a shit about her or her ex, and 70 minutes of her simpering "sweetie" at him, alternately begging, telling him she's attempted suicide, and pretending she's strong and has already moved on and doesn't care, aren't going to change my mind.

Wilson throws everything into the performance but it can't make her character's histrionics any more relatable or likeable, and the only thing distracting from the tedium is the way van Hove and designer Jan Versweyveld's signature aesthetic turns a lot of what's going on into unintentionally comic gibberish. It's the usual stripped-down modern look, with Wilson behind a sliding glass window, wandering in and out of view as she paces, talking on the cordless receiver of a landline, while occasionally using her mobile to play music.

But the play was written in 1928, and while van Hove is also credited with adapting it, any adaptation he's made to the text hasn't actually involved matching it to what he's put on stage. So a great chunk of the play involves Wilson complaining down the phone about the crossed lines and dropped calls that were more common when the technology was still having teething problems. There's something more than a little ludicrous about her complaining that the landline call's cut off and she can't finish her thoughts to her ex, if only there was some alternative method of communication available, perhaps in some way connected to the mobile phone she's been using to listen to "Single Ladies" (because IRONY) and for no other purpose. The very essence of the play is connected to the telephone being something new - the woman has a kind of morbid fascination with the way "the device," as someone who'd grown up in the late 20th century surrounded by phones would definitely call it, can give you a real-time conversation with someone that they can instantly cut off if they want to.

I found it particularly irritating because if this is meant to be a fairly liberal adaptation, the 21st century rewrite option seems pretty straightforward: Between text and any number of messaging programs, people actually do use the phone a lot less for personal voice calls now, and you could easily make a couple of tiny amendments to have the woman rediscovering how to connect to someone over a lengthy personal call, rather than being caught up in the wonder of a new technology (that was actually old before she was born.) Still, at least van Hove has kept the biggest moment of unintentional hilarity for last, as an overwrought final tableau gets a spectacularly misjudged musical accompaniment. To paraphrase Wilde, as Wilson succumbs to ultimate despair to a sudden blurt of Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball," it would take a heart of stone not to laugh.

The Human Voice by Jean Cocteau in a version by Ivo van Hove is booking until the 9th of April at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Jan Versweyveld.