Blindness
There is a reason that the Adelaide Festival is renowned, and it is productions like Blindness that remind us what theatre excellence looks like.
Presented in the Queen’s Theatre, originally built in 1840, the oldest intact theatre in mainland Australia, it is somehow fitting that here, the past meets the possible future. Directed by Walter Meierjohann, Donmar Warehouse’s acclaimed production is based on the novel by José Saramago. Blindness has been adapted by award-winning playwright Simon Stephens and is a 70 minute, unique and personalised theatre experience.
The story is told solely by British actor, Olivier Award winner Juliet Stevenson, an acting force already known to Adelaide audiences through her 2020 Festival headlining performance in The Doctor.
Issued with our own binaural pre-programmed headsets (and with plenty of technical support on hand), the audience is ushered into a stark performance space. The ceiling is hung with ordered, coloured fluoro lights that are cleverly and strategically lit in different colours, moved during the performance to surround patrons and extinguished at appropriate nail biting moments. The audience all have a seat in a pair of chairs, cleverly lit from below.
Most audience members face different directions and the only obvious decoration are the starkly scrawled words “If you can see, look. If you can look, observe.” The power and significance of these words only hits home as the chilling thriller unfolds. Sound Designers Ben and Max Ringham and Lighting Designer Jessica Hung Han Yun have crafted sound and lighting so effectively that the experience is not only unique, it is totally captivating. Because of their work, you are there, you see it and feel the anxiety, the panic, the suffering, the hopelessness. You are safe, but physically and metaphorically you are blind, but gradually, you are able to see.
The tale begins with a somewhat mundane traffic incident. Vocally, Stevenson calmly recounts a story where a driver at an intersection suddenly becomes blind, and we quickly discover that this is not a single incident; it is the beginning of the spread of an insidious pandemic, infecting all who come in contact with it, except for one person who becomes our story teller, our eyes, our guide, and at times, our conscience.
Stevenson is extraordinary as the narrator. With nothing but her voice as her acting tool, she guides us through the roller coaster of emotions in this compelling script, including seemingly rational belief in government and the decency of people, through to despair, panic and outrage as newly blind people are herded and imprisoned in a former asylum. Abandoned and treated as disposable, her outrage, fury and passion to survive is palpable. Her tackling of the ‘insidious monster of fear’ is inspirational.
As with many dystopian pieces, we see humanity descend below the realm of animal survival instinct behaviour. There is senseless murder, panic, sexual assault, theft and unspeakable psychological trauma, but the quest to survive, to create one’s own ‘family’ of survivors is strong and the story becomes somewhat reminiscent of the 1971 film, The Omega Man, a precursor to today’s dystopian style of storytelling, where a sole survivor is left to battle all challenges and carve out a hopeful end and a future for humanity. World crippling pandemics pre 2019 were, of course, unimaginable, and until our current COVID pandemic, were seen as the fodder of Science Fiction. For this reason, Blindness is now excruciatingly believable and relevant and its lessons are both challenging and salient. If I have any criticism of this magnificent production it is that the rather abrupt, convenient ending lacks the emotional lead up captured in the opening and throughout the harrowing story. It felt rather like the story needed to end rather than the situation was resolved.
One of the beautiful expressions from the play refers to ‘cleaning the unbearable filth from the soul’, and this message stayed with me. We are urged not to lose ourselves, to observe, to look, and this is a timely reminder that humanity is frail, vulnerable, but curiously resilient. Blindness is unique, satisfying theatre, safely accessible in COVID times, and with a message that endures well beyond today.
Jude Hines
Photographer: Helen Maybanks.
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