One of the first act's characters, Leon (Simm) is a policeman, and in the second half he investigates a woman's disappearance - Simm also plays the prime suspect. The various characters' lives interweave through a series of coincidences, and all the storylines deal in some way, as the title suggests, with problems in communication, principally but not exclusively between men and women. It's a show I went to see for the cast and they don't disappoint, while director Toby Frow keeps the action taut, and Ben Stones' set is a moody but versatile combination of black brick, white blinds and low-key video projections. The show's main problem is that it began life as two separate one-act plays, written a couple of years apart then re-written as a single play by Bovell; thematically it works, in terms of story it's also largely successful, but the end of the first act when the theme of the missing woman is introduced feels like a very abrupt gear shift which takes you out of the action quite a bit.
Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell is booking until the 12th of December at the Duke of York's Theatre.
