The final show of the last Donmar Trafalgar season is full of awkward, unspoken tension, and it’s not only the sea that’s silent.
For most of the The Silence Of The Sea’s conversation-free 90 minutes, newcomer Simona Bitmaté’s Young Woman doesn’t make a solitary sound. Wordlessly she sews or makes a mute point of silently carrying away dirty bed linen.
By contrast, Leo Bill, the German military interloper in the World War II-era French home she shares with her uncle talks spiritedly at the pair. A blustering bumble of anecdotes and philosophy, Bill gives him a desperation and determination to fill the soundless space with anything resembling warmth, humanity or friendship.
Finbar Lynch as the stone-faced uncle talks only to the audience, filling us in on the story of his soldier-murdering brother and unseen goings on in his occupied home.
But Bill’s Werner is no all-conquering Nazi. His grasping need for connection and his stumbling over words reveal a sensitive soul in the most awkward situation, though playwright Anthony Weigh, who has adapted Vercors’ novel for the stage, scatters miscommunication among the one-sided conversation. There’s clearly no mistake in the German fumbling his way through a philosophical point to misguidedly claim: “I annihilate you”.
The vindictive nature of Nazi occupation is revealed through more offstage drama as this happiness desert becomes a happiness vacuum.
With much of the ‘action’ taking place offstage and recounted or overheard, Gregory Clarke’s effective sound design becomes pivotal, its sounds of destruction echoing from an upstairs room and storms whipping up the titular water reminiscent of radio play sound effects.
Simon Evans, the former Donmar Warehouse Resident Assistant Director given his chance to shine in the West End, makes brave decisions about sparcity of set, utilising just a bench, a piano stool and a lamp, leaving the performers to mime their way through the rest. It frees the intimate Trafalgar Studios 2 from clutter; a piano in so small a setting could dominate proceedings. Instead, it is that awkward, squirm-inducing, itchily-uncomfortable tension that makes its presence felt.