Culture
A Brisbane Circus Show Asks Who Carries the Load
Phillipe Blake—29 October 2026·2 min read
Brisbane's inner-city voice since 2014
Brisbane's inner-city voice since 2014
Our review of Queensland Theatre's Small Mouth Sounds, a silent comedy where every seat has headphones and the smallest sound becomes the story.
From the start, this production of Small Mouth Sounds was clearly designed around listening. As we walked into the theatre, every seat had a set of headphones draped over its back. Left and right of the stage, white-on-black messages sat quietly on display, then became audible once the headphones went on. They were simple instructions, and we needed them. This was a new experience for the whole room, and a little guidance helped each of us find the best way in.
Two Auslan interpreters stood at the front of the stage, helping everyone settle in and get their headphones on. They stayed for the entire performance.
The staging was fabulous. Isabel Hudson's cabin sat centre stage, with a generous playing space in front of it, and the action moved between the two in near-equal measure. When the show began, the sound was so present, and so unlike anything I had heard in a theatre, that my senses needed a moment to recalibrate. It was marvellous, and incredibly intimate. I was in love before a single performer had set foot on stage.
What followed was a stunning display of physical humour, emotional resonance and human nature, with connection and intimacy conveyed almost entirely without dialogue. Every noise we make moving through space was captured: how we handle objects, our effect on the places we inhabit, all delivered to our ears through the headphones. Mike Willmett's sound design, a blend of live foley and binaural atmospheres, carried every one of those details straight to the ear. Brilliant!
The performances were nuanced, shaped by what each character carried in with them and by how they met one another, from one couple arriving together to everyone else a stranger. We began by hearing the Teacher, an unseen voice guiding these city runaways through a retreat where they hoped to find peace and some meaning in their lives. The couple's performances were the ones that stayed with me. They felt real, and poignant.
Isabel Hudson's design had one more trick that impressed me. The script calls for three cabins, and she condensed them into one. Christine Felmingham's lighting made that possible: the light would dim inside the cabin for just long enough for stagehands to make subtle changes to the bed coverings and the arrangement of the beds, and when it returned we were in another cabin. With the retreatants sharing cabins in pairs, we slowly rotated through each pair's experience. Then the lighting opened out again and drew us back to an open-air camp. It was clever, and it worked beautifully.
We moved through a whole range of emotions as the six retreatants worked out what the experience meant to them. There are bold moments, and the play does not hold back. The boldest came at the lake, when Rodney, played by Stephen Geronimos, stripped down to his birthday suit. We got an eyeful. Set your gauge to "anything could happen here".
Each member of the cast honoured their role: Louise Brehmer, Stephen Geronimos, Judy Hainsworth, Kieran Law, Jodie Le Vesconte and Anthony Standish as the retreatants, with Barbara Lowing as the voice of the Teacher. It was a complete experience, the first time this play has been staged with headphones and a first for the Bille Brown Theatre. It broke new ground and gave this theatregoer a real treat.
Read our interview with co-director Bridget Boyle: Small Mouth Sounds Asks Brisbane to Listen Closer.
Images: Queensland Theatre.
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