We Will Hear the Angels

We Will Hear the Angels begins as an impressionistic poem about lonely lives, told through fragments of monologue, mundane sounds, found objects and music. It aims to present a world in absence, with people living alongside one another but somehow always alone. The promise is ambitious.

The ensemble build the world almost silently, moving desks and chairs into place as Bach, drinking glasses and the noises of everyday life begin to make music. Projected windows of the city behind reveal into a collection of isolated but shared realities, while the refrain “always loneliness for me here” repeats across the fragments. Bea, Sonia, Ian, Van and Lou gradually emerge from those windows with their stories of infidelity, unrequited love and loss which begin to overlap and gain pace.

There are some beautiful moments in the writing, particularly in its smaller observations of the people around grief and loneliness. But these fragments can also feel too disconnected to build the stakes they need. But while abstraction is clearly the aim, it becomes the show's greatest weakness. And when monologues lean so heavily into the language of loneliness that they begin to parody themselves, the characters remain at a distance just when the threads of the piece ought to be drawing them together.

It’s the music where the production finds its life. Mia Scott and Apphia Campbell are particularly good vocally, building beautiful soundscapes in their bleakness. But So Lonesome I Could Cry is lonesomely crying out for more bass and percussion, and the wider piece suffers from a similar lack of rhythmic momentum.

That lack of momentum is where the production begins to lose something. What starts as image-heavy fragments gradually drops much of that imagery, becoming more choral, then more concert. The stories that seemed to be building into one another begin to fall away as the music takes over more of the work.

There is plenty of talent here, instrumentally, vocally and in the acting, but the piece never quite matches the momentum of its opening. It has the parts. It just needs the rhythm.

We Will Hear the Angels by Magnetic North. Credit Mihaela Bodlovic.