Speaking in Tongues

Two married couples switch partners for the night. Who will have the courage for betrayal? Who will walk away? A man weeps in the street after realizing that his only love, long vanished, is alive and well and has completely forgotten him. A woman disappears on a lonely road, late at night, leaving ominous last words on her absent husband’s answering machine; at the same time, a man covered in blood comes home and throws a woman’s shoe into an adjacent empty lot.

Using overlapping dialogue and simultaneous scenes, playwright Andrew Bovell weaves these stories together in his psychological thriller Speaking in Tongues. As the mystery of the woman’s disappearance is investigated, the characters are forced to confront their own cruelty and isolation, desperately reaching out to each other even in the midst of betrayal. Painfully honest and darkly comic, Speaking in Tongues is for all of us who’ve done things we’re not proud of, and wished we could take them back even as we know we would do them again.