THE SOUND INSIDE with Mary-Louise Parker

THE SOUND INSIDE written by playwright Adam Rapp ("Red Light Winter" a Pulitzer Prize finalist) is a hushed play about loneliness that accumulates in emotional power like a soft snowfall that swept into mountainous drifts.  Bella (Mary-Louise Parker in a searing performance) is a tenured writing professor at Yale.  Bella speaks to the audience from a park at night where she writes when battling insomnia.  She ruminates on observations and feelings which also serve as fodder for her writing.  The barrier between her life and her creative writing jettison in and out of context.  She informs us she's in her 40s, never married or had children, she has no no parents or siblings and was in seemingly excellent health until felled by an excruciating pain.  She was able to call 911 before passing out.  She woke in the hospital after emergency surgery which revealed advanced cancer and given a dire prognosis for survival. The timeline of events are hazy.  Her writing student Chris (Will Hochman) stops by during her office without having pre-arranged a meeting.  The two banter over books & broach into each other's personal lives.  She informs him in the future he needs to set up a scheduled stop.  This doesn't stop Chris from dropping by again unannounced. Bella is drawn to Chris and invites him to join her for dinner.  The two find they share a lot in common besides being bibliophiles.  They're both find solace in books over company.  Chris shares that he was raised by a single mother who is a successful mystery writer with agoraphobia. At times Chris (Will Hochman) also addresses the audience.  The accuracy of events is dusted under shifting ambiguity.  Bella depicts a scene while talking to the audience where she meets someone in a bar and goes back to his shabby motel  room for sex. The first time in 2 years she tells us. The scene is simultaneously amusing and melancholy.  What's clear is the profundity of hunger "the sound inside" which roars unheeded by others.  Clarion  cries to be seen and heard and touched bellow like muted falling snowflakes.  Rapp's elegiac writing, pitch perfect acting by Parker & Hochman, and dim yet inviting staging  create a visceral theatrical experience that rages with human longings.