World's longest silent play  

The National Theatre is to stage the world's longest silent play.

For one hour and 40 minutes, 450 characters played by 27 actors will utter not one single word between them, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Experimental Austrian playwright Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other is to be given 30 performances at the National.

"The point is to explore what's left when you remove language - and the answer is that there's a huge amount," James Macdonald, the British director of the play, explained.

The play is set in a city square through which hundreds of characters - including a bride, a businessman, a roller-skater, a playwright, Charlie Chaplin, Tarzan, Abraham and Moses - drift.

There is no plot and virtually no character appears twice. The idea apparently came to Handke as he sat at a cafe on an Italian piazza watching strangers come and go.

If wordless, it is not entirely soundless. The silence is punctuated by snatches of music, the occasional scream and the recorded sounds of an aeroplane or workmen drilling.

A National Theatre spokeswoman said: "It is a great piece of work, challenging and something that we should be doing.

"Tickets are selling well - not like hotcakes, but they are doing well. It is appealing to younger people. We think our more traditional audiences will wait until the reviews."