Lights, sound, action!

A play about a pandemic in a pandemic. Mirvish Productions, Canada’s largest commercial theatre production company, is back with its first indoor theatre presentation and the story is indisputably fitting. Based on Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s novel of the same name, Blindness uses light and audio to create a multisensory experience allowing visitors to immerse themselves into the story of a city besieged by an epidemic of blindness. 

“There is a really big distinction between imagining something and being in something,” recalls Director Walter Meierjohann. “I had the book with me during lockdown….but I didn’t want to [read it].” 

Making its Canadian premiere, Blindness takes place at the Princess of Wales Theatre from now until August 29. Due to popular demand upon opening, it will also come back for a fall run from September 24 to October 24. Adapted by award-winning playwright Simon Stephens, the production is directed by Meierjohann with immersive binaural sound design by Ben and Max Ringham. 

Since the pandemic is as real inside the book as it is outside of it, the presentation is unlike anything you would normally expect. Before the show begins, audience members eagerly wait six feet apart from one another in the theatre lobby before staff escort you right onto the stage. With a limit of 50 people per show, everyone takes a seat in reserved, distanced pods. The layout is minimal but with purpose. The seating arrangement is designed so everyone is facing each other, no matter if you attend solo or with someone else. Everyone faces a stranger. As you look across the room, there is nothing else but a stage with all those attending seated on chairs, masked, with a pair of headphones provided and a series of light fixtures overhead. On a wall reads a quote from the novel’s prologue that sets the tone of what’s to come, an epigram to blindness that reads: "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe."

Photo courtesy of Mirvish Productions

Everyone is asked to put on headphones, and the story officially begins. Visitors follow the voice of British stage, film and TV actress Juliet Stevenson, who plays a doctor’s wife and is the primary storyteller of the piece, as she struggles to survive while everyone around her falls victim to the blindness disease and the city goes into panic mode. Whispers, background noises and character dialogues all evoke the feeling that the action is happening around you. You can even feel the distance. Some are like whispers right by your ears and others are like far-away yells. There are times of complete darkness as well as flashing bright lights that almost blind the eyes momentarily. The light fixtures overhead drop up and down in front of the audience as it moves with the storyline. The show sparks conflicting emotions of adrenaline, solitude and curiosity. Spanning 75 minutes without intermission, the experience leaves people on the edge of their seats as the binaural sounds and lights transform the atmosphere. The result is a powerful performance that feels as though you are right in the centre of the action.

Interested in understanding director Walter Meierjohann’s creative process behind his adaptation? Click here. For tickets and more information on Blindness at Mirvish, visit https://www.mirvish.com/shows/blindness.