In late March 2020, shortly after theaters shut down for what many assumed would be a relatively short spell, an actor named Gunnar Cauthery tweeted the following: “When this is all over, I don’t want to see a SINGLE play about coronavirus. And I include in that any classic play where the design relocates the action to the modern day in a state of lockdown or whatever.” I reflexively agreed, thinking that such an exercise would prove less cathartic than simply dreary.
More than a year later, I found myself elated to join a small, socially distanced crowd of people finally stepping inside a theater again—on an Easter Sunday, fittingly—to catch a preview of Blindness, which is about…a pandemic. The new work, which premiered at London’s Donmar Warehouse last summer, was adapted by Simon Stephens from Portuguese author José Saramago’s 1995 novel of the same name, which was clearly not inspired by COVID-19. (The book was previously adapted for other stage productions, as well as a film and an opera.) The plague in this case has a single, debilitating symptom, identified in the title, though it doesn’t manifest itself as you might expect. In Saramago’s depiction, those who suddenly fall blind see nothing but white; the first man stricken—while driving, inconveniently—describes feeling as if he has “fallen into a milky sea,” in the translation Stephens uses, by Giovanni Pontiero.
[Read Roma Torre’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
In Stephens’s adaptation, which runs just 70 minutes long under Walter Meierjohann’s direction, we see none of the characters, and hear very few of them speak. The production is all sound and light, with beams of the latter hanging in stark patterns above a space occupied only by seats for audience members, who are spaced safely apart and provided with sanitized headphones. The lights flicker and change color according to the text, which has retained the intense lyricism of its source but made the action and expression more compact. There is no significant dialogue after the beginning, so we hear only two perspectives, both voiced by the veteran stage and screen actress Juliet Stevenson: that of the Storyteller, or narrator, and that of an ophthalmologist’s wife, who finds herself in a unique position to assess the horrors that unfold.
“Dystopian” is a word frequently ascribed to Saramago’s novel, and if that term can get sprinkled around rather liberally these days, it certainly applies to what goes down here, as a government that makes ours (even in recent years) seem like a model of transparency takes increasingly desperate and futile measures to sustain a façade of relative normalcy. As the doctor’s wife, Stevenson breathes heavily and raises her voice in terror and, eventually, anger, as a range of sonic effects, used with potent discretion, evoke a range of oppressive and destructive acts.
The effect is at once bleak and sensually overwhelming. Some of the creepiest moments are actually calm ones, on the surface—when the lights abruptly go out, for instance, and all we can hear are footsteps, coming closer or drawing away, or Stevenson speaking softly, suddenly sounding as if she were right next to us. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting and Ben and Max Ringham’s sound design conjure not just an illusion of blindness in the literal sense, but the alienation and helplessness felt by anyone who is lost or estranged—familiar feelings, certainly, during a pandemic. But for what seems like a while, there is no promise of catharsis here; though a few other characters are intriguingly detailed—a young woman whose appetites match her beauty, a lonely boy in need of maternal attention—the doctor’s wife becomes, essentially, our sole frame of reference, and there were times when I felt as stifled by her perfectly appropriate panic and rage as I felt moved by her courage.
When relief does arrive, it seems a bit calculated, though beautifully so. It’s here that Stephens’s own poetry soars highest, so that additional thoughts and observations are unnecessary, as the designers—who also include Lizzie Clachan (scenic)—conspire with the playwright and director to deliver the kind of transcendence only offered by live theater, in a communal setting. In more than one sense, then, Blindness proves well worth the wait.
Blindness opened April 6, 2021, at the Daryl Roth Theatre. Information and tickets: blindnessevent.com
