Sea Wall / A Life

By: Simon Stephens, Nick Payne / Narrated By: Jake Gyllenhaal, Tom Sturridge

Length: 1 hr and 22 mins

Oh so quiet; oh so devastating

Sea Wall/A Life were picked by my sister for our little audiobook club, and both plays were definitely a hit.

First off, lemme just give ya the heads up my sister gave me: You MUST listen at x1 speed, esPECially as Tom Sturridge, who delivers the “Sea Wall” monologue has a thick accent. I know, I’m used to listening at x1.25/1.3 at the slowest, jacking it up to x1.5, x1.8, and x2.2 if I reeeeeally wanna get through something, so this whole x1 thing was new to me. And it’s not just the heavy accent, it’s that each word in each sentence is given such weight by Sturridge.

Sturridge plays Alex, a light and fluffy kinda guy who enjoys life, loves his life with his wife, his beloved daughter, even his gruff father-in-law. He merrily walks with his daughter in the sea, knowing he holds the world in his hand even as he holds his daughter’s. But then, no gentle slope, he discovers just what a sea wall is, and he realizes just how devastating Life can be from one second to the next. Sturridge delivers all this with a halting, impassioned voice. He muses on all that cannot be explained away, and even as we’re with him as he celebrates love and life and fatherhood, so too are we with him when he’s brought to his knees. “Sea Wall” is slowly yet emphatically done, and did I need a tissue by the end? Of COURSE I did.

Then we come to “A Life” and most of it, the monologue as carried by Jake Gyllenhaal, has chuckle-inducing moments. Gyllenhaal, whom I always think of as being just a kid, is a son, a husband, and a rather feckless soon-to-be father. There are comedic lines cuz o’ his cluelessness at how to support a wife as she carries their first child, but it’s bookended with scenes of his character, Abe’s, losing his own dad. There is hope; there is futility; there is the suddenness of death even as new life bursts forth. That he remains clueless even upon becoming a father becomes poignant because Abe doesn’t have his father to turn to, no Dad’s Manual his father left behind. Instead, he has a yowling, howling, peeing creature on his hands, and it’s not until the end, when Abe is floundering hilariously away, that we’re hit with the play’s most devastating line.

And did I need a tissue by the end?

Of COURSE I did.

Taken together, the two plays complement each other well. And while they were performed onstage, the monologue format suits audio-only quite well. This is TOTALLY due to the fact that, stage directions be damned, the voices of the actors, their on-the-spot timing, the emotions conveyed (And there are plenty!), are near perfection. In the first play, we have light and love and death and emptiness and God and the Universe. In the second, we have chuckles and death and despair and love and God and the Universe.

But mostly, we have but the short time we’re given on this planet, with all its twists and turns, with its many joys and its oh so many sorrows, with its grief, with its heart stopping resilience (Whether we want to spring back to life or not).

These aren’t even a 2 hour experience.

Try it: 1 hour and 22 minutes later, you’ll be wiping your eyes, and thrilled to see men brought to their knees then back to life again.