Sound has come to the attention of scholars from a range of disciplines lately, leading to some influential publications such as Jean-François Augoyard's Sonic Experience (2005), Ross Brown's Sound (2010), Adrian Curtin's Avant-Garde Theatre Sound (2014), Petra M. Mayer's Acoustic Turn (2008), Jonathan Sterne's The Sound Studies Reader (2012) and Salome Voegelin's Listening to Noise and Silence (2010). Nonetheless, the elusiveness of the object of study and the complex nature of how humans – individually and collectively – actually process and experience sound have meant that sound studies are still in their infancy. The case becomes even more complex when trying to study sound and the act of listening in an environment such as the theatre. It is therefore anything but an easy task that George Home-Cook undertakes with his phenomenological study of listening when/by attending the theatre, a task he masters excellently.

Home-Cook presents a very persuasive argument for a theory of ‘attending’ (p. 1) as a movement that involves ‘stretching’ (p. 1) ourselves towards the many sounds and silences we hear in the theatre. In other words, listening is thus far from a passive state, but an active effort. He begins by interrogating some of the main taxonomies of listening (Barthes, Chion and Truax) and by suggesting the adoption of Arvidson's model of attention as a dynamic process instead (p. 2), thus highlighting the constant shifts and developments of focus within the ‘sphere of attention’ (p. 3). With his model, Arvidson conceptualizes attention not as a spotlight or a field but as a three-dimensional sphere, within which our attention is in continuous flux. One of Home-Cook's principal achievements is thus to call into question a set of received dichotomies in the discourse on listening, which have too long been taken for granted: looking versus listening, signal versus noise, spectator versus audience, significance versus sense, attention versus distraction, perception versus reception (pp. 169–70). Home-Cook points out the fault-lines of these binaries, deconstructs them and suggests more nuanced, more contextual relationships.

He divides his text into four chapters, which allow him to systematically develop his theory and which are also closely interlinked by an iterative use of well-chosen case studies: significant performances by Complicité, Lepage, Castellucci or Sound&Fury, but also Beckett's radio plays. Rather than presenting his experiences with these performances in single conclusive analyses, the author returns to selected moments of these events to unfold more and more layers of listening. The chapters move from a discussion of ‘noise’ (pp. 24–58) to the idea of ‘designed sound’ (pp. 59–98) in theatre, to the notion of an absence of sound, namely ‘silence’ (pp. 99–130). The final chapter (pp. 131–63) then addresses the relationship of sound and atmosphere and offers a well-argued critique of the idea of ‘immersion’ or ‘being-in sound’ (pp. 133–43): the idea of immersion is always paradoxical as it denotes a sense of stasis and passivity (being surrounded by) and of movement (immersing oneself).

This is a deeply interdisciplinary project, bringing together insights, theories and methodologies from a range of fields, and doing so in a very considerate and meaningful way, weighing terms and arguments and their merit carefully. It has quality and depth, and is intimately conversant with the key theories in the field – from phenomenology to performance theory, from concepts of sound and noise to dramaturgies of (radio) plays – but adds a unique perspective: a theory of how audiences attend the theatre. This is aided by the tone of the book, which is particularly well written and personal, and avoids jargon where possible.

The author modestly hopes for his book to be ‘a sounding board for further enquiry’ (p. 23), but it is much more than that: together with Katharina Rost's forthcoming book (2016, a study of the performativity of aural attention), this will be a reference point for the emerging field of study and a rewarding read for scholars, students and practitioners alike.