The Inconsistent Whisper of Insanity – 24:7 Theatre Festival, Manchester
Writer/Director: Ian Moore
Reviewer: Ruth Lovett
The Public Reviews Rating: 
Set against the backdrop of the Kronstadt rebellion which was an unsuccessful uprising of Soviets against the Russian government in March 1921; The Inconsistent Whisper of Insanity is a fictional account of one young girl’s accidental involvement in those events.
Asked by her Guardian, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Bolshevik Army, to meet a relative at the station, fifteen year old Milena becomes unwittingly involved with a group of White Mensheviks. If you are unfamiliar with this evet then you may struggle to pick up the story straight away as the piece is off and running from lights down with no time to establish the historical context the piece is set against.
You will need your thinking caps on for this one.
With scenes that take place in the past, present and future, it can be difficult to follow the story line and at times it is difficult to establish where the narrative lies because of the chopping and changing and repetition of various scenes. It takes some time to realise that we are seeing the story through the young Milena’s eyes and again through her older, dementia confused eyes some 60 years later.
At times Milena’s voice is lost amongst those of the other cast members and is drowned out by the rather hypnotic and effective creation of sound effects such as those of a moving train.
As the piece is only 60 minutes long there is not time to explore all the themes and issued raised and much of it seems rushed and hurried and rather than being thought provoking; the result is more of confusion as the audience sometimes struggle to keep up with all the events on stage and perhaps miss the significance of some of the scenes. Maybe the subject matter is too large to visit in an hour and suffers from a lack of clarity and focus because of this.
It is difficult to establish what the purpose of the piece is and I was left feeling frustrated rather than entertained or enlightened at its conclusion and would love to see more work go in to this production to make it more focused and remove some of the ambiguity around what the piece seeks to do for the audience.
Runs until 1st August
Tags: 24:7 Theatre Festival, Fringe, Ian Moore, Manchester, the Inconsistent Whisper of Insanity
12:13 pm on July 27th, 2010
on the contrary i think the piece was intriguing and i enjoyed how more of the story was revealed as time went on. Really original, touching and thought provoking! I would also like to see a full scale production!
1:39 pm on July 27th, 2010
First, thank you for the review. As a practitioner I put myself out there to be judged and find the majority of your comments useful.
In response, the piece is deliberately structured in such a way as to make the audience work – the title kind of gives you a clue that that will be the case. With words like ‘Inconsistent’and ‘insanity’ in the title you should get the impression it aint going to be a simple ‘Once upon a time…’ narrative with a ‘Happy ever after’ conclusion.
The play does what it says on the tin.
The story is very straight forward –
A young girl is asked to go to the station to meet her aunt. She is involved in an accident which results in her ‘losing’ sixty years of her life. She returns with her companion sixty-odd years later to reclaim those years.
I do agree that telling a story of such epic proportions would be easier outside of the 60min restriction but thems the rules of the Festival.
In addition, I saw the telling of this story as a challenge.
Dr Zhivago and War and Peace it isn’t but both, as well as being set during a similar timeframe, are told over hours rather than minutes. If someone took it up and invited e to develop it into a full length production I know it would not be opened up making it completely clear.
For most audiences the thrill has been as much in the putting pieces together in the right order and conecting the threads – tortoise, bread, life, death, journeys being a few of the most obvious.
Finally, I’d recommend a second viewing – I’ll pay – perhaps it would result in a degree of clarity.
thank you once again – and if you’re at the venue – give me a shout. i’d love to meet and chat
Ian Moore