Susurrus: University of Oxford Botanic Garden

The audio drama by David Leddy (pictured) is both poignant and shocking, yet presented in a relaxed manner, encouraging its listeners to engage with both the story and their surroundings.

As you walk around the gardens, stopping in eight specified locations, you listen through headphones as the drama unfolds to reveal a disturbing tale of sexual abuse and loss of innocence. Seemingly disconnected voices come through in a stream of reminiscences, as four characters look at past events from different points of view.

The story revolves around Robin Goodfellow, a professional singer involved in the first production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. You never hear Goodfellow’s voice, but you hear the voices of his son and daughter, a former colleague and a researcher. The sense of unease kicks in almost from the start, and from there the full horror of the drama builds to a dramatic and tragic conclusion. It is both shocking and compelling.

Much of the play’s success, of course, comes from the four actors, who breathe life into every word, snatching them from the pages of the libretto and making them their own. Karen Ramsey is deliciously gossipy as Goodfellow’s former colleague, far more interested in the ‘scandal’ of the relationship between Britten and Pears than in the much more serious events unfolding backstage.

Only towards the end does she seem to finally realise the impropriety that has been happening in Goodfellow’s dressing room. Wendy Seager and Paul Thomas Hickey give gripping performances as Goodfellow’s son, Moth, and daughter, Helena, and Stewart Ennis contributes some powerful commentary as the researcher.

Susurrus, written and directed by David Leddy, continues at the Oxford Botanic Garden until September 27, as part of the Oxford Playhouse’s Playhouse Plays Out programme. The Garden is open from 9am-5pm. For more details, visit www.oxfordplayhouse.com, or www.botanic-garden.ox.ac.uk