"Blindness". The Pilch. Review by Sam Wagman

The act of criticism is itself a dance with the impossible. The relaying of the visual, auditory, and personal encounter with performance via the textual simplifies it. Drama is experiential – any review is dependent on its author’s trust of themselves and their senses. When we strip away the act of seeing and the subjective truth of the knowledge of our senses, it begs the question: what are we left with?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that there was only one production being staged in Oxford this week. Sir Gregory Doran’s bombastically assured production of Two Gentlemen of Verona has set itself up to be event-viewing since its initial announcement. For those that have attended, it’s a joyous reminder of the wealth of student talent on offer, wrangled together under the stewardship of one of Britain’s most revered directors. Two Gentleman exemplified the vitality of directorial vision – how amateur performances can be oxygenated by wacky and brave creative decisions. However, the Michael Pilch Studio has, this week, laid witness to the other end of this scale. Tired Horse Productions’ Blindness is the most innovative, horrifying, and daring example that vision is not the exclusive domain of the titans of British theatre but, rather, is gestating in those students bold enough to take a leap.

Adapted from José Saramago’s 1995 novel, Blindness follows a group of individuals fallen victim to a sudden epidemic of mass blindness. It’s a blend of dystopic science-fiction and cutting social commentary; an anxiety-inducing Hitchcockian horror that combs through our fears of entrapment, dependency, and sensory deprivation. In August 2020, the Donmar Warehouse staged a socially-distanced pandemic production of Blindness, complete with noise-cancelling headphones and brutalist lighting installations. Tired Horse’s adaptation takes us one step further – noise-cancelling headphones are paired with blindfolds, for a complete denial of the comfort of sense.

There were only 7 people at this evening’s showing, spread disorderly across a doctor’s waiting room. Usually, one might hope for a more packed audience, replete with gasps, laughs, and shuffles. Yet, the intimacy present between us, reminiscent of the awkwardly liminal sensation of an actual doctor’s waiting-room, only served to heighten the latent uneasiness of the production’s premise. Placing the tools of disembodiment on, the only comfort available was the presence, now solely resting in the imagination, of my fellow audience members. Marianne Nossair, a haunting shadow of a doctoral assistant in full scrubs, metamorphosed into a distant spectre; both perceiving her audience, and plaguing them.

The binaural sound system employed by Lucas Ipkendanz’s adaptation is truly haunting. The sound design is an extraordinary showcase of where drama meets technology. My prior fears that Blindness may be more reminiscent of a science museum exhibit than a piece of theatre felt foolish. Instead, Ipkendanz constructs an undefinable mind-palace of inward imagination – each footstep, whisper, and shout as potent and awing as if performed live in front of you. The urge to remove one’s blindfold, to set oneself free of the claustrophobic walls of narration flooding the brain, was overwhelming. The experience is constructed to place us, each member of the audience, as the central character of Saramago’s novel, a mute ophthalmologist. Poddy Wilson, as his wife seemingly unaffected by the blindness epidemic, recounts the breakdown of social order that surrounds us. She whispers in our ear, so close you could touch her, but without the requisite want to do so. Our confinement within a government quarantine facility is disturbingly vivid, and upsettingly oppressive. Whilst the Donmar Warehouse may have staged this story from within the boundaries of social isolation itself, our current dislocation from those pandemic years prompts an anxiety and panic reminiscent of another time. Ipkendanz’s decision to stage Blindness, in the aftermath of our own social deprivation, is an inspired and risky choice. A choice that yields unwieldly and morose effects.

This production is thus subjective experience amplified into infinitesimal possibilities. Reliant on our ability to build erstwhile defences against the void of darkness and social breakdown, Ipkendanz and sound designer Charlie Hill have assembled a rebuttal of truth and knowledge. In tandem with Saramago’s explicit distrust of power and authority, this production breaks down any assumed reliance on the self – instead, we are forced to inhabit a totally enveloping world trading off our revulsion at enforced stillness. Whereas Two Gentlemen of Verona was unadulterated escapism, Blindness is a deft reminder of the inescapability of flesh and bone; a body horror resting solely in the mind. It is to the credit of its cast, crew, and director that I left the Michael Pilch Studio in a state of ecstasy. The red and orange hues of the evening’s sunset an unusually sobering sight – one that I was, perhaps for the first time, truly grateful for.