Melbourne is blessed with many big, sensorially stimulating shows at the moment, from Opera Australia’s two just-concluded productions to the new Cinderella and ‘reimagined’ Harry Potter. Melbourne Theatre Company’s latest is extraordinarily stark in comparison. A 90-minute literary two-hander with a minimal set, The Sound Inside reminds us how theatre can move, intrigue and disturb with little more than words. How a subtle change in the way a gifted actor speaks, looks or moves can create a seismic shift in what the audience thinks or feels. This is theatre for the mind rather than the senses.

Shiv Palekar and Catherine McClements in The Sound Inside, Melbourne Theatre Company, 2022. Photo © Jeff Busby

The latest from New York playwright, novelist and TV writer Adam Rapp, The Sound Inside was nominated for six Tony awards in 2020, including best play. It explores a brief period in the life of Bella, a middle-aged Yale professor of creative writing. A cancer diagnosis seems to signal the impending end of her small, bookish life when one of her students, Christopher, starts dropping by her office. This fellow misfit is...