There is much to muse upon before A Collection of Noises commences in BATS’ smallest venue, the Studio. I’d have called it cosy except the narrow bench seats with severely upright backs are not exactly comfy. It is a testament to the way the ensuing play engages us, then, that such concerns evaporate once it starts. Besides, we’re here to pay attention, not lounge about in indulgent comfort.

The set represents a retro darkroom with facsimiles of large black and white photos strung up as if to dry after ‘fixing’ in the developing process. These are what online images used to be before the internet was invented. An instamatic camera and early model video camera reinforce the retro feel.

Later, however, a modern digital camera is used – to take photos at a school ball – so perhaps this environment is to be seen as its inhabitant’s subjective reality. There is an objective explanation, however, relating to a recently deceased grandfather: these artefacts are his.

It starts with a blackout and a long pause, to realign us to night vision, perhaps? There’s a recurring sound effect (sound designer: Prashan Casinader) which first seems like heavy breathing and later morphs into the sound of surf before reverting to breathing. We conjure with this as we will.

The young woman who arrives – and will become identified as Alice (Georgia Latief) – has black hair, a black dress and her face is shades of grey. I am tempted to interpret this as carved from stone or – after she tells of a childhood incident at the beach – cast in sand. But it’s simpler than that: she too is monochrome in her subjective reality.

Her voice verges on monotone, too. There is a regular cadence, a flattening out at the end of sentences, which implies current detachment from the past experiences she describes. Or is it that they cut too deep to produce surface expression? Again the musing on the whys and wherefores is so much part of the dramatic structure, I’m loath to say too much more about exactly what has produced this compelling and somewhat unnerving state of being in Alice.

Suffice to say self-esteem, or a lack of it, is at the core and why this is so emerges gradually. In the wake of her childhood relationship with her mother, there is a betrayal by her best friend Sarah who is blonde, beautiful and also lacking in self-esteem. Beyond the quest for self-improvement through ‘contouring’ make-up, the notion of cosmetic surgery surfaces (note the markings on the publicity image) and this in turn reveals the anatomy of cutting by way of revenge and self-harm.

That much must be said in order to acknowledge there is an astute dramaturgical talent at play in the work of writer /director Alexander Sparrow. His publicity reveals A Collection of Noises is inspired by “Grand-Guignol (a realistic horror genre originating in France), black and white films, and psychological thrillers” but this is no splatter-fest. The dramatic tension arises from how Alice’s objective awareness of how it is for others confronts her unresolved emotional issues and the potential actions they may provoke. The objective smallness of the issues (a critical mother; mean-mouthed schoolgirls) is equal and opposite to the imminent enormity of the emotional responses.

On top of all this Sparrow adds a meta-theatrical challenge to us, the passively observing audience, unwilling to offer help or advice yet sitting here expecting … what exactly? Is she right in her conclusion? You’ll have to see it to answer that.  (It opens on a day the news reports how paramedics had to shield a dying man from smartphone video recordings destined, it was feared, for YouTube voyeurs.)

In paying homage to genres past, Sparrow and his team deal with very contemporary issues. Craft-wise there may be more to explore in Alice’s relationship with her grandfather, vis-à-vis the darkroom setting and her own interest in photography – and I can’t help wondering whether an amber or red ‘safelight’ (used when exposing light to photographic paper) might not be judiciously employed.

That said, this second iteration of A Collection of Noises (is that the right title for it now?) offers an absorbing 50 minutes of drama.

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