BBC Radio 4, 20 March 2012
Kit (Effie Woods) suffers from amnesia after an accident where she experienced
extreme hypothermia. She finds it difficult even to remember her name, let alone count from one to ten; it is only as a result
of patient counselling by psychiatrist Helena (Sarah Waddell) that Kit manages to recover.
Eventually she is allowed to return to the home she shares with boyfriend Dan (Jonas
Khan). An outwardly calm person, obviously in love with her, Dan tries his best to make allowances for her condition, patiently
repeating words that she did not know, while comforting her during her frequent emotional crises. But something is not quite
right: isolated sounds keep milling round in Kit's mind, which she initially cannot understand. As Alice Bulmer's drama unfolds,
however, so the sounds gradually assume a meaning for, leading to an unexpected denouement.
Noise was a fascinating piece, in which the fragments of Kit's mind gradually
come together - almost as if she is reconstructing a broken cup to find out exactly what happened to her. Director Polly Thomas
made an ingenious of sounds - repeated scraps of Kit's speech, the sound of multiple echoes (giving an unearthly feel
to the play), and remembered phrases uttered by those closest to her (Dan, Helena). Effie Woods gave a vocally nuanced performance,
combining terror with moments of extreme rationality, as she tried to make sense of what happened.
