Review: SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS at Wilbur Theatre Group

There's nothing typical about Bess Wohl's Small Mouth Sounds, an hysterical and boldly creative romp like nothing you've ever seen before!

With Wilbur Theatre Group presenting this Rhode Island premiere, Small Mouth Sounds follows six strangers in a silent retreat in the woods and what could go wrong when you combine some very different personalities and a super-quirky host, for a weekend of reflection.  Or so they all hoped.

The performance features an ultra-talented cast who must balance their silence with their need to be heard.  There's three Wilbur Theatre debuts for Small Mouth Sounds including Harry Aspinwall, who plays the British snob Rodney who looks to be very connected to his inner being, or so it seems; Olivia Hodson plays the love-starved and snarky Alicia and Amie Lytle who plays the Cancer survivor Joan, whose not quite sure what she is looking for in her future.  Rounding out the cast include Wilbur mainstays David Rabinow, who plays the always-silent Jan, Beth Alianiello who plays Joan's adoring girlfriend, struggling with her own issues, the hilarious Stuart Wilson, who plays the bumbling Ned and finally Jennifer Mischley who plays the voice of the retreat's quirky "Teacher".

Small Mouth Sounds works on your power of assumptions-something we all do to our detriment at times-and how those assumptions could be right on or go so wrong.  Are those assumptions based on what we are seeing or just about us and our own take on things, as good or bad as those can be?

With Wohl's recent success on Broadway with her newest play Liberation, she's becoming one of American Theatre's most astute and original voices, showing her, with Small Mouth Sounds premierig almost a decade ago, as being way ahead of her time.

Small Mouth Sounds, with a runtime of 100 minutes without an intermission, speaks to all of us who are desperately searching for an escape from a life spent annoyingly-connected to the world and our work with little escape from either.  When you leave the play, you'll have your own feelings about what a retreat like this will do or not do for you and your mental well-being.  For the characters in the play, the retreat did not amount to what they hoped it would but when really does it?  My wife and I talked a lot about that fact on the way home and whether we would ever take part in something like this.  While we both felt a silent retreat would be a nice escape from the crazy life we lead, it certainly isn't for everyone, as this play showed in spades.  One friend who saw the performance the next night, said "it convinced me that I'm sure I'd never want to attend one of those retreats..."  Like most everything, it's all in how you see things and what you want to get out of them.