The Pangs of love « Voicing the Silence

Reviews from 'The Pangs of love'

Brilliant performance. Norris’s “Noble Art of the Word” puts to shame our modern actors, who fear to bring colour to poetic, rhythmic language, making it monochromatic dull prose. May they learn from one of the best examples.

Newspaper reporter – Olsztyn

Using only a chair, table, voice, facial expression and gesture, Geoffrey brought light to words transforming lines of difficult text into user-friendly form enabling a wide variety of audience to enter into and enjoy the performance.

Teacher from Laski

I marvelled at the ability of the voice to transmit emotions, joy, sadness, anxiety etc. without my really being able to understand English.

Blind Pupil from Laski

The choice of songs sonnets and Soliloquy’s was appropriate for a wide audience, young inexperienced pupils included. Sighted or unsighted, Shakespeare literate or not, everyone enjoyed the performance at various levels in their own individual way.

Teacher from Laski

Geoffrey showed his master skill when singing and speaking the songs and sonnets. The audience directly experienced a lively and vigorous style of interpretation. By interchanging the two forms of singing and speaking Geoffrey managed to keep the balance and indirectly controlled the atmosphere in the hall. Keeping a lively and involving his audience tone of performance Geoffrey presented a full-scale theatre show. Its dynamism focused everyone and to a large extent released stressful language lacks which some might have experienced.

Pupil Red Cross College – Norway

What a relief to experience a speaker/actor of Geoffrey Norris’ calibre! This was no speech-artist hiding behind a neat podium, complete with texts at the ready. He not only commanded the whole stage, moving freely to different positions for different poems, but everything had been learnt by heart. His wonderfully sonorous voice rang out effortlessly both in the more introspective pieces and also melted into song more than once. He even performed the most extraordinary speech acrobatics when he “sang” the “Song of the Loch Ness Monster” by Edwin Morgan Geoff must surely count as one of the most versatile and distinguished speech artists in the world.

Christopher Cooper Devon