Beauty and brutality _{by Madelaine Empson}

“If we get it right,” Dulcie Smart says, “it will be a spellbinding experience for the audience.”

The standout New Zealand actor, back in the country after more than 30 years in Berlin, is talking about The Sound Inside from Pulitzer Prize finalist playwright Adam Rapp. After searing through Broadway, where it earned six Tony Award nominations, Melbourne Fringe, and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the gripping yet delicate tale will have its New Zealand premiere at Circa Theatre. Here, it will be brought to life by a world-class team of designers, actors, and visionary director Stella Reid from the 5^th of July to the 2^nd of August.

Reid is drawn to the play for its visceral and lyrical storytelling, saying Rapp’s writing “feels like an Edward Hopper painting – a quiet meditation on solitude, capturing the many ways we isolate ourselves and laying bare a raw loneliness. But somehow these freeze-dried spaces become the setting of a very real connection. The unlikely friendship between Bella and Christopher reminds us of those rare moments when you find someone who speaks your language.”

That language has enriched her brain, says Smart, who plays the brilliant Ivy League writing professor Bella alongside Kieran Charnock as the enigmatic, lonely student Christopher. Calling the dialogue between the two characters “intelligent and poetic and beautiful”, she is thrilled to be working in the evocative world Reid and production designer Meg Rollandi have created to perform this “mysterious, multi-faceted jewel of a play”.