Adelaide Festival. Donmar Warehouse. Old Queen’s Theatre. 23 Feb 2022
Equipped with headphones and a few at a time, the masked and vax-checked audience is carefully guided into the half-light of the cavernous Old Queen’s. Collapsible wooden chairs are distanced back to back so people face in various directions. They are instructed to raise a hand if they have any problems.
A layout of light bars is the only set along with one wise piece of graffiti on the far wall: “If you can see, look; if you can look, observe”. The audience waits and soon is enveloped in a voyage of dark and light unlike anything in the real world. Through the headphones comes the beautiful voice of Juliet Stevenson at first describing the oddity of man suddenly going blind at the traffic lights. His wife takes him to the ophthalmologist whence others in the waiting room soon become infected with the same mysterious white blindness. Pretending also to be blind, the wife remains the only sighted person as gradually the entire city goes blind with a panic-stricken government locking away the infected under armed guard. And thus does she describe the contagion of blindness, as created by Jose Saramago in his Nobel Prize-winning novel.
It is not surprising that this production, adapted by playwright Simon Stephens and directed by Walter Meierjohann for the UK’s Donmar Warehouse, has been received with effusive acclaim around the world. It is immersive theatre at its sublime best. The technology by which Stevenson’s voice is delivered through the headphone is so acute that one actually believes she is breathing in one’s ear as she whispers the terrible truths of this other plague. From time to time, a great rumbling soundscape designed by Ben and Max Ringham oppresses the senses. One recoils in shock from occasional crackling flashes of blinding white light. Bodily defences alert, one is carried deep into Saramago’s fearful dystopia for 70 intense minutes. When, finally, one is released into the light and air of the outside world with a glimmer of hope, it is to emerge into our own ongoing plague and the worlds merge in a surreal after-wash sensation. And Adelaide’s clear blue sky is the most beautiful thing in the world.
Samela Harris
When: 23 Feb to 20 Mar
Where: Queens Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
