Outside Voice

Writer Matt Morrison and director Hanna Berrigan deliver a timely drama at Soho Poly with Outside Voice, a play that interrogates the rise of conspiracy theories, the erosion of public trust in science, and the toll this takes on our closest relationships.

Guy (Phil Cheadle), runs Outside Voice, a live-stream channel dedicated to debunking mainstream scientific consensus. Once a researcher, he was removed from his post for unethical practice, and now finds himself increasingly at odds with his wife Helen (Viss Elliot Safavi), a measured and principled philosophy lecturer, on the brink of a new position chairing a government health committee.

The couple’s tension fizzes on stage, heightened by a shared barely spoken tragedy, the loss of their child, that hangs over every disagreement. The play questions whether you can move forward with relationships when opinions are bitterly split.

Dan Starkey is a standout as Mike, Guy’s former colleague and Helen’s close friend. Simmering with suppressed rage, he embodies a man caught between personal loyalty and moral obligation. His mission to expose Guy’s past misconduct is consuming him, mixed up with his desperate worries about his daughter, Eve, who has cancer.
Eve is the emotional core of the play, played with depth by newcomer Elle O’Donoll. Her request that Guy give her his controversial “wonder drug” for cancer is the twist that pushes the plot into morally murky territory. When it’s revealed he gave her a placebo, the audience is left reeling. Was this him protecting her and Helen, or was it the ultimate admission that he doesn’t actually believe his own medical claims?

The final act sees Guy ousted and disgraced - only to be embraced by the alternative health scene in Los Angeles. His exile fuels his celebrity, in a clever critique of today’s culture, where claiming to be “silenced” can amplify one's voice.
Morrison and Berrigan don't offer easy answers, instead pose provocative questions: Where do we draw the line on engaging with fringe ideas? Is it ever enough to simply hear “both sides”? What if someone you love becomes the thing you oppose?

Outside Voice is a smart, and deeply human play. In an age where belief can seem more powerful than fact, it’s an urgent reminder of the cost of disconnection, from science, from the truth and from one another.


Photo credit: Claudia Cantarini