Speaking in Tongues is a three-act minimalist play, written by Australian scriptwriter Andrew Bovell.
The first act consists of a series of two-hander conversations involving two couples, Leon and Sonja, and Jane and Pete. The same night that Sonja almost cheats on Leon with Pete, Leon actually cheats on Sonja with Jane. After brief meetings between Leon and Pete as well as Sonja and Jane, the two couples both reunite to talk things over, bringing up some strange recent experiences.
The second act consists of four overlapping monologues from four newly introduced characters: Neil is writing a letter to an ex-girlfriend, Sarah is talking to her therapist about an encounter with an ex-boyfriend, Valerie is making a call to her husband's answering machine after her car broke down, and Nick is making a statement to police about a missing person's case. It gradually becomes apparent that Sarah and Neil are talking about/to each other, and that Valerie is the missing person.
Act 3 brings back Leon and sees him interview John, Valerie's husband, about his actions the night of her disappearance, and asks for a tape of the messages she left him. This is intertwined with a session Valerie had with a patient.
The play was first performed in August 1996 in Sydney, starring Marshall Napier as Leon and Nick, Glenda Linscott as Sonja and Sarah Geoff Morrell as Pete, Neil and John, and Elaine Hudson as Jane and Valerie. It won the 1997 AWGIE Award
for Best New Play. Bovell later adapted his script into the 2001 film Lantana.
Speaking in Tongues provides examples of
- Abusive Parents: John mentions that Valerie was sexually abused by her father, and believes this may influence the way she talks to her patients.
- Anachronic Order: The monologues in Act 2 all take place at different times, at least three of them before the final conversation of Act 1. Leon and John's interview in Act 3 also appears to be set in this timeframe, while the flashbacks to Valerie and Sarah match up to Act 1 and 2.
- Can Always Spot a Cop: Pete mentions that Leon looks like a cop, based on a vague "feeling".
- Commitment Issues: Valerie diagnoses this in her session with Sarah. She points out that Sarah nourished Neil's commitment to her, then abandoned him, leaving him wanting her, which she considers a position of power. "I don't think you know how to trust, Sarah I think something or someone has damaged you and that you've lost the ability to trust. And now you've taken refuge in a relationship with a man who can't give himself entirely to you. Because he has another. His wife."
- Contrived Coincidence: The entire first act: Leon and Jane's affair coinciding with Sonja and Pete's near-affair. Leon and Pete meeting in a bar a few nights later. Sonja and Jane meeting in a different bar that same night. And that's not getting into the connections these people have with the missing person case...
- Domestic Abuse: Jane mentions that Nick had been violent to Paula when he came home drunk. Despite this, she still has absolute faith in him when he denies hurting Valerie, which Jane envies.
- Driven to Suicide: Implied with Neil, as a result of his ex-fiance's rather callous rejection. By all appearances he walked into the sea and drowned himself.
- Foreshadowing: Pete tells Leon about a woman who started screaming at him in the street for no reason. We later see this from Valerie's perspective in Act 3.
- The Ghost: Nick's wife Paula, the only named character who doesn't appear on stage.
- Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: John, when he tells Leon that he got home around midnight. It turns out that he got home early enough to hear Valerie's last message while she was leaving it, but made no attempt to answer the phone.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Valerie left a shoe behind in Nick's car, which he tried to dispose of in a vacant lot across the road from his house but was witnessed by Jane.
- Love Triangle: The first act revolves around a love square between two married couples. The second and third act introduces another love square, between Neil, his ex-girlfriend Sarah, her married lover John and his wife Valerie.
- Maybe Ever After: The first act (and the play for that matter) ends on an ambiguous note for Leon and Sonja's marriage, but a much bleaker note for Pete and Jane's.
- Minimalist Cast: Nine characters, played by four actors.
- Never Found the Body:
- Assuming Neil did drown himself, Leon mentions that no one matching his description has been reported missing and no bodies were recovered. The only trace of him found is the brown brogues he left on the beach.
- Unlike in the film, Valerie is never mentioned to be found either.
- Never My Fault: Sarah refuses to accept responsibility for hurting Neil, arguing that he should have just moved on long ago despite having no idea what happened to her, or for hurting the wife of the man she's having an affair with. Valerie calls her out on this.
- Once More, with Clarity: Act 3 revisits Sarah's session with her therapist, confirming that she's Valerie, and the answering machine messages Valerie left in Act 2, revealing that John was able to hear them while she was leaving them. We also see the other side of Pete's story about being accosted by a stranger in Act 1, who turns out to be Valerie.
- One Degree of Separation: The nine characters are all connected either by marriage, infidelity, or by their actions the night of Valerie's disappearance.
- Poor Communication Kills: The way Nick tells it, he picked up Valerie and agreed to give her a lift home, but when he took her down a back road shortcut that she and John didn't know about, she panicked and fled the car into the bush.
- Stalker with a Crush: Neil saw his ex-girlfriend on a bus, years after she had disappeared and broken off their engagement without explanation, and followed her home for several days afterward intending to confront her at her favourite restaurant, only for her to apparently not even recognise him. As it happens, Sarah did recognise him, she just pretended not to.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: A lot of the dialogue in the double infidelity scene overlaps, as does the dialogue in the following scene where Sonja and Pete come clean about their near-affair only to find out about Leon and Jane's affair. Several moments in Part 2 and 3 shift from one character's monologue to another's using the same line.
- Suicide by Sea: The implied fate of Neil, though Leon can't be certain.
- That Was the Last Entry: Valerie's last message on John's answering machine, saying she was going to try to hitch a ride home.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Pete tells Leon he can't forgive Jane's infidelity specifically because he came so close to doing the same thing. "I came this close and pulled back because, in the end, I thought I had a reason to. But Jane obviously didn't."
- Watch Where You're Going!: Leon tells Sonja about colliding with a man while jogging and getting needlessly verbally aggressive with him before realising how upset the man was. The man appears in the second act, named Neil.
- Wham Line: The last lines reveal that John and Sarah were having an affair behind Valerie's back.
