9 Kinds of Silence NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (4)
See it if you want moment to moment acting in a war zone with the intensity of a kind of tripwire existence speaking to this moment right here.
Don't see it if you don't want to face the truth in metaphor of how we live, the absurd realities of war, and our own complicity. Or beautiful language.
See it if you like superb acting by Hend, and an incredible vision by Majumdar as both playwright and director in this ever-present piece
Don't see it if you don't like long silences
See it if you like to see more work by international voices and if you appreciate strong design work.
Don't see it if you're looking for strong acting and something entertaining. Unfortunately, the direction and acting were not carrying things through.
See it if A bureaucratic secretary & a newly released POW meet in a dark reprocessing tent on the outskirts of an endless war zone Strong performances
Don't see it if Majumdar's script (& his direction) create a haunting environment where the horrors of war (both past & present) howl loudly in the silences
Critic Reviews (5)
" '9 Kinds of Silence' is the kind of messy, frustrating work that still deserves to be seen and pondered over."
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“There are a lot of maybes in 9 Kinds of Silence, largely because the playwright has constructed his nightmare world out of bits of varying world crisis spots, aiming for universality but often ending up with confusion… unlike, say, Harold Pinter's later politically themed plays, like Mountain Language, which evoke a terrifying atmosphere of repression, 9 Kinds of Silence often feels lost in a forest of generalities.”
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"Silence" is engaging and confusing on different levels and in surprising ways. Majumdar constructs the interaction between the protagonists to expose adroitly these contrasting reactions. It is primarily a monologue punctuated by disparate sounds and the silence of one of the players whose non-verbal actions communicate feelings and ideas from within a profound cone of silence until near the end of the play.
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"This is an incredibly difficult play for any actor to pull off, as silence is not empty space. Silence in its many forms is an elaborate symphony played with a full orchestra to an audience of deaf people. It is no easy task to master both the notes and their spaces and have them both ring out just as true when you’re the only instrument."
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some kind of allegory about war and totalitarian/military/theocratic societies, although the audience is left to piece together uncertainly the answers to basic questions, such as who, what, when, where, and why. Far clearer, and more rewarding, is the riff promised by the title: Though not directly enumerated, and more often implied than spelled out, we are encouraged to contemplate silence in some of its many uses and meanings ….
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