Queen Theatre, from now to 20 March.
Review – Geoff Jenke
“There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me”
I couldn’t get that Pink Floyd line, from the classic Dark Side of the Moon album, off my mind after the show. Pre show, you are led to your seat, and the seats face all ways. My partner and I were sitting back-to-back, with us thinking “this is a bit weird”. Then you have to put on a pair of headphones and the show starts.
The story (in your head now) starts at a set of traffic lights, at a junction in a big city, a car remains motionless, its driver unable to go on. Suddenly, without warning or cause, he has lost his sight. It soon becomes clear that this is a blindness like no other, infecting all who come into proximity with it.
Within days, it has spread throughout the city. The government tries to arrest the contagion by herding the newly blind into a disused asylum. But its attempts are futile. The city is in panic.
The first ten minutes of the show is basically an audio book, with the story being told through the headphones. But soon the theatre is plunged into darkness and the lights lowered to eye level, quite blinding on the few times they are used. The majority of the show is in darkness. The headphones were so clear and the voice at times, right there over your shoulder, quite disturbing. You are too scared to turn your head in case you hit the narrator.
Based on Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s dystopian novel Blindness, Juliet Stevenson’s gripping narration unfolds around you. As the world falls into blindness, it also naturally falls into chaos. This is a very bleak, dark tale and not because the lack of light. At times it is quite violent, even though you cannot see anything.
The Queen’s Theatre is the perfect venue for this play. It has that old gothic, mental institution look and feel, that is so relevant to the play. You couldn’t do this one at the Festival Theatre.
Blindness is almost sensory overload, a trip only using sight and sound. Indeed, “There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me”.
I honestly have never attended a “play” like this before and I urge you all to go experience this. It may seem a little weird, even unnerving, sitting in a theatre, in these times, with complete strangers, in total darkness. Blindness is well worth it.
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