REVIEW: Small Mouth Sounds - Queensland Theatre Company

Small Mouth Sounds

Presented by: Queensland Theatre Company

Venue: Bille Brown Theatre

Written by: Bess Wohl

Co-Directors: Bridget Boyle and Nathan Sibthorpe

Date Attended: 16 October 2026

Set and Costume Designer: Isabel Hudson

Lighting Designer: Christine Felmingham

Composer and Sound Designer: Mike Willmett

Immersive Audio: Counterpilot

Intimacy Coordinator: Michelle Miall

Stage Manager: Georgia Gould

Photography: Stephen Henry

"Think of this retreat as a vacation from your habits. Your routines. Yourself."

Five days in the rainforest, sharing accommodation with strangers, surrendering your comforts, and being forbidden to speak. Sounds like a holiday I'd need another holiday to recover from. Fortunately, Queensland Theatre Company's Small Mouth Sounds lets me experience a silent retreat from the comfort of the Bille Brown Theatre, with some fancy new technology!

Written by Bess Wohl and co-directed by Bridget Boyle and Nathan Sibthorpe, the play follows six people seeking relief from whatever life has thrown at them. Inspired by Wohl's own retreat experience, the play contains remarkably little dialogue. Instead, movements and noises tell us who these people are (or who we think they are).

I brought along a friend who recently completed a ten-day silent retreat in Pomona and he told me some participants gave up after three days! The first gong announces that we're joining the retreat, and our headphones place us among the participants. It's the first production of Small Mouth Sounds to use this technology, developed with Brisbane-based experimental performance collective Counterpilot. The unseen teacher addresses us through the headphones, giving us the same instructions as the participants onstage. For the next five days (or 100 minutes, in our case), we're fellow retreat-goers.

Binaural audio creates a surround soundscape: footsteps approach, twigs snap, leaves rustle, and mosquitoes buzz so convincingly I want to swat them. The sensitive microphones can pick up fabric brushing against skin, jingling jewellery, and the many varieties of people sighing. The headphones can let us hear the auditorium or shut it out almost completely. With the latter setting, I can barely hear anyone else in the audience. And if any sounds become too much, we can simply remove the headphones (which I did during the sex scene). But sometimes it sounds as though there are microphones near us, too, so be careful not to fart!

Composer and sound designer Mike Willmett combines live mixing with recordings from Queensland locations, including frogs from Maleny and water from Lake Wivenhoe. The frogs make popping noises like an enthusiastic game of ping-pong, transporting me back to my childhood home beside a creek, where our neighbours genuinely thought we were playing table tennis every night. At night, the sound becomes extreme bedroom ASMR (no, not that kind!). There's rustling of bedding, someone suppressing sobs, and the crunch of contraband snacks beneath the covers. The morning birdsong might sound exaggerated to international ears, but anyone who's been aggressively awakened by Australian wildlife knows better.

Christine Felmingham's lighting occasionally plunges the theatre into darkness, leaving only rushing water, rain, or wildlife stirring in our ears. Isabel Hudson's timber cabin design sits beneath an impression of the rainforest canopy. Lighting transforms its reflective exterior into transparent walls. Like an enormous vivarium, we watch the inhabitants during moments they'd probably prefer to keep private. The single structure represents three separate cabins, while the stage floor resembles rain-soaked earth. I swear I can almost smell the damp rainforest. Later, the smell of actual smoke reaches the audience, adding another pleasurable sensory dimension.

With conversation prohibited, the cast must communicate through carefully controlled physical acting. Anthony Standish takes on the role of Ned, who looks like he’s just realised he’s signed up for the world's least enjoyable school camp. Worse still, he's sharing a cabin with Rodney, a carefree hippie whose constantly jingling bracelets announce his presence before he even appears. Standish communicates entire complaints through groans, sighs, and expressions of barely contained irritation. When Ned breaks his silence during a Q&A, we discover there's considerably more behind his frustration. He recounts an almost absurd catalogue of misfortune - including a brain injury, robbery, alcoholism, a failed marriage, and a house fire. Despite all that, he's mainly disgruntled with the state of the world and society at the moment. He's come here desperately seeking peace, but five days of silence aren't going to erase the suffering.

Stephen Geronimos plays Rodney, a barefoot yoga enthusiast who carries himself as though he's already achieved the enlightenment everyone else is searching for. Between his elaborate poses, permanently serene expression, and bracelets that jangle with every movement, it's no wonder the other participants greet his arrival with collective groans. Rodney's spiritual prestige has a less admirable side... When Alicia experiences a panic attack, he reluctantly helps regulate her breathing, and their vulnerable encounter soon turns sexual. Speaking of having no inhibitions, Geronimos also strips completely naked at one point. I knew this full-frontal nudity was coming, but I still wasn't prepared!

Judy Hainsworth portrays Alicia, whose evident fresh heartbreak emerges through her restless movements, stolen glances at her phone, and desperate attempts to contact someone outside the retreat. She struggles to sit with her own thoughts, and so the muteness offers little escape. Louise Brehmer and Jodie Levesconte play Joan and Judy, the only two participants who arrived together. While the others are learning to coexist with strangers, these women must navigate enforced silence with someone they know intimately and whose relationship is already burdened by a seemingly serious illness - something neither silence nor positive thinking can control. Their exchanges in moments of wordless frustration reveal a couple confronting an uncertain future.

Kieran Law brings a gentle warmth to Jan, the bearded participant who quietly looks out for those around him. While others struggle, Jan appears content to offer companionship through small gestures of care, often recognising when someone needs support. There's a sweet reversal when the younger Alicia finds herself looking after Jan. We eventually discover that Jan understands very little English, which changes how we interpret his quiet compliance with the retreat's instructions. More heartbreakingly, he's grieving the loss of his son. Knowing this adds another layer to his instinct to 'parent' the others.

The most talkative character is, ironically, someone we never see. Barbara Lowing voices the retreat's teacher, whose instructions and philosophical advice are delivered directly into our headphones. Her habit of snort-laughing at her own jokes is entertaining enough, but a sudden, violent sneeze straight into the microphone is even funnier when heard at such close range. As the retreat progresses, her own personal troubles begin creeping into the announcements, and the woman instructing everyone else to find inner peace gradually loses her composure. It turns out the teacher has just as much difficulty escaping life's problems as her students.

Each participant is asked to write down a private intention for the retreat - although we're never permitted to see or hear what they've written. Their behaviour, however, tells us plenty. Despite agreeing to surrender their usual comforts, they sneak food, smoke, indulge their lust, burn incense, use technology, and find other ways to interact with each other.

Themes of control, purity, and separation run through these encounters. Everyone arrives hoping to change something about themselves or their circumstances, yet so much of their suffering lies beyond their control. They're encouraged to abandon old habits and detach from their troubles, but five days of silence can't simply erase years of grief, illness, or heartbreak. Even the weather mirrors their turmoil as storms roll in.

The limited dialogue means we never fully understand these characters' histories or motivations, but that's true of the strangers we encounter every day. We don't need to know someone's entire story to recognise their grief, frustration, loneliness, or need for connection. I found myself understanding these people anyway, and perhaps even recognising parts of myself in them. After all, "We all carry things the world can't see."

At the end, a new group emerges (from the audience!) to begin the retreat. Jan stays to do it all again. His decision carries hope and sadness, because healing doesn't occur nearly. For all its technical ambition, Small Mouth Sounds returns my attention to ordinary human behaviour: offering someone a tissue (many times), sharing silence, or crying in front of a stranger. I do that last one at least once a year...

Boyle, Sibthorpe, and their cast take a theatrical risk to place us inside an experience we'd normally watch from a distance. And if you fancy the full experience, there's always a real silent retreat in Pomona. Personally, I'll take the headphones!