A string quartet in school uniforms scrape their bows along the edges of swords while an adolescent boy in the foetal position recounts his fear of the school bullies waiting to make fun of his breaking voice.
Quiet Songs, the debut show from writer, director and composer Finn Beames, is a slight and strange undertaking, telling the semi-autobiographical story of a queer coming-of-age. Oscar-nominated actor Ruth Negga is the Boy, artfully inhabiting the space between a child’s gangly looseness and a teen’s self-consciousness in her performance, languorously draping herself across the bare stage as she unearths a tale of bodies betraying identity and the desperate quest to remain within the norm.
