Listen to Susurrus here

Written and directed by David Leddy

Performed by Stewart Ennis, David Leddy, Gabriel Quigley and Karen Ramsey

Recorded by Diana Simpson

Map artwork by Laura Molloy

26 June – 22 July 2006
as part of Bard In The Botanics
Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

Susurrus is a play without actors, without a stage and with only one person in the audience. It’s an unusual piece that is part radio play, part tour guide, part avant-garde sonic art, part botany lesson and part stroll in the park. It involves following a map around the lesser-known nooks and crannies of the Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens as you listen to voices and music through headphones.

It takes A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it’s starting point, picking apart the original and turning it into something almost unrecognisably different. Like a radio tuning in and out of different wavelengths, we hear anonymous speakers tell seemingly unrelated stories about botany, opera and memorial benches. As time goes on, however, their anecdotes start to fit together into a mournful and poignant story of love and loss. The piece presents an unsettling narrative of the descent into mental illness and the disintegration of a family. It asks ‘how long do we have to wait before we are allowed to speak ill of the dead?’

Musically, the piece combines an eclectic blend of different musical styles from opera to electronica. It takes fragments of Benjamin Britten’s 1966 opera Midsummer Night’s Dream and combines it with artists as diverse as Cleo Laine, Aphex Twin and Nat King Cole. They all blend with the botanic gardens’ own noise of sussurus - the onomatopoeic name for the noise of wind rustling in trees.

* * * * "The brilliance of David Leddy's Susurrus… is both a clever refraction of Shakespeare's themes and a distinct drama in it's own right." The Guardian

* * * * "Exsquisitely realised" The Herald

* * * * "A magical blend of sorrow, anger, compassion, excellent writing and magnificent music." The Scotsman

Listen to Susurrus here