Review: “The Encounter” at the Curran, San Francisco

Entering the Curran theatre’s gorgeously renovated house to a see a performance of The Encounter, one is immediately struck by the presence of headphones at every seat in the house. Listening devices have become commonplace in the modern theatre world for hard of hearing patrons, but this appears to be something new entirely. Indeed, The Encounter, a one-man show directed and performed by one Simon McBurney, uses headphones for the show’s entire sonic output, which uses a variety of sound effects and binaural microphones onstage to create a sort of soundscape to accompany the relatively minimal action that happens onstage.