Review: THE SILENCE AND THE NOISE, Streaming

The Silence and the Noise is a new film version (by Pentabus and Rural Media) of Tom Powell's play, fresh from its live staging at this year's VAULT Festival. In a setting which suggests the absurdity of The Bed Sitting Room, two young people meet on a tatty sofa in the great outdoors.

Ben (William Robinson) is a naïve drug runner in flashy sports gear; Daize (Rachelle Diedericks) is an outwardly streetwise daughter of drug tragedy. As these two come together through addiction and supply, the play becomes something of a twisted love story as the pair spar by words. Both are trapped for varied reasons, holding back the fears which threaten to crush them.

In a garden filled with trees and birdsong, Ben and Daize move from their first confrontation (she threatens to mash him up with a knife) to a friendship which thrives on an uneasy truce and trust, with danger dancing around every word and moment.

Diedericks's Daize is looking out for her addict mum on the face of things, trying to push away the goodies that come in powders and capsules and cause harm. As she chips away at Robinson's trusting Ben, it becomes clear he is as vulnerable as any addict, arguing that the dealer he runs for has his clients' best interests at heart.

With the one location, and one which only feels partly real, The Silence and the Noise straddles the space between live theatre on a stage and a film designed for the screen. Showing for free on YouTube from 20 April, this looks good on a television screen and feels full of tension and without any trace of sentiment.

Co-directed by Rachel Lambert and Elle While, this play digs deep into the psyche of those caught by drugs when still young - Ben is at school, presumably Daize is too. We never see what goes on outside of the garden, in the house where the destruction of lives is taking place as the dealers feed the desires of their dependents.

In the garden, the two characters goad each other and worry at their own insecurities, while offering a crumb or two of kindness. It feels both hopeful and hopeless, and Powell's script keeps you watching and guessing.

Raw, brutal, twisted, and full of rich wordplay, this play makes its political points and highlights a relationship which uses regret, mistakes, and teasing to hide what is really happening at its core. It is less the star-crossed young lovers of Shakespeare than the smack-stained children of a modern wasteland.

The Silence and the Noise is available online via https://pentabus.co.uk/silence-noise from 20 April - 31 May.

Photo credit: Rural Media