Hollywood Fringe Festival Review: Voices in My Head: A Life

Voices in My Head: A Life




Written and Performed by Bill Ratner




55 minutes; $10


Synopsis: Bill Ratner – one of the most recognizable voice actors in Hollywood – tells about his life.

Review: You recognize his voice. Bill Ratner, the ever-present omniscient narrator in countless documentaries, video games, and movie trailers – the fucking voice of GI Joe and God, has decided it’s time he use his trade to tell his own story. To be sure, he has had an interesting life. There’s an instant familiarity–a bond–listening to this anonymous voice that has been woven into the fabric of our day to day lives. There's a special delight in hearing that voice becoming real. He actually talks! And he talks off-script. Ratner spends the most effective parts of his performance on glimpses of his career foreshadowed in his childhood. He speaks of his fascination with media as a boy and recalls his first announcer with a voice “deep, calm, and highly intelligent.” He would spend hours sucking at the “glass teat” of the TV screen, absorbing voice and image, before launching his own radio station with neighborhood kids who would broadcast to each other late into the night.

Less successful are the stories about his family life, which has been unspeakably tragic. As a boy, he lived through the death of his mother, brother, and finally father, who all died separately from unrelated causes. To his credit, Ratner does not allow the story to get caught up in melodrama, only speaking warmly about them. But his tale is a bit too choppy, jumping from moment to moment, sharing an amusing observation here, an extraordinary coincidence there, while not revealing too much of himself, his story. These snippets somehow don’t add up to “a life” as promised in the title. A stronger connection to the theme might serve the piece better. In fact, the production would probably have benefited from being longer (something I rarely say), allowing Ratner to tell his story more fully, a common thread linking the stories together.



Best Line: "The marketplace is a dark soulless thing, vulnerable to the artless whim of philistines and barbarians: the sponsors!"

Bottom Line: A charming, warm performance and that voice! Still, the piece seems incomplete, underserved by his desire to honor his family in ways that aren’t relevant to the audience at large.

Voices in My Head: A Life is part of the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival and plays at the Complex Theatre tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 pm and runs for 55 minutes. You can find tickets here.

Dan Johnson is a freelance writer in Los Angeles helping cover the 2012 Hollywood Fringe Festival for Cinesnatch.