This sound installation is chilling, uncanny — and the first show to play a Toronto theatre all pandemic

The pandemic isn't over, but CBC Arts is ready for a Big Night Out. During the first lockdown, we wrote about all things virtual, and now that live entertainment is returning to Toronto, we're ready to mask up and enjoy the scene. Read our takes on some of the city's new attractions. COVID-19 keeps changing what we've come to expect from arts and culture, but when you've been stuck at home since the Before Times, everything's a major event. 

Toronto is finally returning to the great indoors. Last week, Blindness opened at the city's Princess of Wales Theatre, becoming the first major production to appear at a local theatre since the dawn the pandemic — not just at, but inside. An adaptation of José Saramago's dystopian 1995 novel, it's the story of a devastating pandemic, an inexplicable illness that erases the sight of all those it infects. But Blindness isn't a play, per se. Rather, the piece is an audio installation, one experienced simultaneously by a small audience — seated and distanced on the stage of the Princess of Wales. 

Augmented through sound and lighting design, the story unfolds through the voice of a narrator, a woman who's retained her sight for reasons as mystifying as the global disaster she's surviving. Juliet Stevenson, the acclaimed British actor (Truly, Madly, Deeply), plays the storyteller in pre-recorded audio.

First staged in August 2020 at the Donmar Warehouse in London, Toronto's Mirvish Productions has waited months to bring the production to Canada. A premiere was previously scheduled for November 2020, and in the time since, Blindness has travelled to centres throughout the world, playing Amsterdam to Auckland. A recent off-Broadway run closed in late July. For those in the Toronto area, opportunities to finally experience the show will be limited. Though the piece is able to run as many as four times per day, this current engagement is scheduled to wrap by September when TIFF moves into the venue for another post-pandemic first: in-person festival screenings. And as of publishing, tickets are already sold out, though a second round of dates (Sept. 24 to Oct. 24) will go on sale Aug. 14. CBC Arts's Leah Collins and Lise Hosein were lucky enough to hear (and see) the show for themselves. Read on.

Leah Collins: Blindness — it's a story about a pandemic, and it's curious to me why we'd want to seek out a story about the sort of global disaster we're living through. Maybe not the exact global disaster, but still. You're a fan of the book, yes?

Lise Hosein: Yes. It's hard to be a "fan" of Blindness — it's a really emotionally difficult read — but I have read it kind of repeatedly. I'm not sure I would ever have related that book to the last 16 months of our lives. I'm not sure I relate Blindness to the pandemic even after "seeing" the production. (We'll get to that.)

LC: So you haven't re-read it since COVID-19 hit? Why have you turned to it in the past?

LH: I'm not sure. I feel like many people who have read it return to it. It's a super compelling narrative and José Saramago is a magical writer. I think the utter shock of imagining a pandemic in which everybody goes blind traumatized me enough that I kept returning to the scene. Have you ever read a book that you could smell? It's one of those. It's truly harrowing.

LC: And yet, somehow, scent was not pumped into the theatre as part of this show! I'm joking — and no shade intended, either. My entire nervous system was on edge while listening to the story ... so maybe this would be the right time to get your take on the format?

Blindness is an audio production — a "socially distanced sound installation," to use the official verbiage. I understand that the creators went with that format as a complete pandemic pivot, but it's a convenient match for the story, and an effective one too, I thought. We were listening to plenty of audio drama last year, and I was so interested to experience how the storytelling might be different in Blindness. Or rather how the experience itself would be different — actually being gathered with an audience and having the benefit of light design, stage design, etc.

What were you expecting from this adaptation?

As soon as we were seated, I started understanding that it was going to be a more full-bodied experience.- Lise Hosein, CBC Arts

LH: I honestly wasn't sure how this story could be adapted. It's been tried once in film and was ... not so good. But as soon as we were seated, I started understanding that it was going to be a more full-bodied experience. When the narrator started speaking directly into our ears, I began to feel it was less like an adaptation of Blindness and more like a manifestation. Do you want to explain the staging, Leah?

LC: Sure. The show is happening at the Princess of Wales Theatre. Typically, that room holds 2,000 people, but Blindness is being staged on, well, the stage — a detail that's not entirely apparent when you enter the room. It's an all-black space with a grid-like lighting system arranged above the seats. Everyone's led to their pod in an orderly fashion and outfitted with some top-notch (sanitized) headphones. Curiously, the seating arrangement makes it so that you can't see the face of your pod pal(s), but depending on where you're at, much of the distanced audience is visible.

When it begins, the storytelling feels familiar: the theatre lights are up as Juliet Stevenson (as the narrator) reads Act 1. The action introduces us to a mysterious epidemic and a few key characters, and I thought that section basically played in the style of an audio book. But by the second act, as the story moves into quarantine, that's when the sound design especially began to play with my senses.

The show's recorded in something called binaural sound, which, as far as I can Google, means that the performance was recorded on two different channels. It essentially simulates the way we hear things in the world around us. And damn is it ever effective.

With the lights completely out, my reflexes were constantly pinging. I could sense Juliet Stevenson pacing the room, from one corner to the next — and I'm 99.9 per cent sure that was just my imagination and not one of the ushers. There were moments when I was convinced that she was hissing in my ear — or breathing a centimetre from my face. What senses can I trust? Where is the closest COVID testing centre?! The way the sound design plays with your perception and sense of space is uncanny.

LH: Yeah. The lights flickered or were startlingly turned on to signal chapter changes. The rest of the time we were in utter darkness, so much so that I didn't realize until near the end of the play that I had had my eyes closed for a very long time. I looked to the right to see you and that's when I realized we were actually seated on the proscenium. The curtain was up and the empty theatre was right next to us, very dimly lit.

I could sense Juliet Stevenson pacing the room, from one corner to the next — and I'm 99.9 per cent sure that was just my imagination and not one of the ushers.- Leah Collins, CBC Arts

LC: Heh. My eyes were wide open the entire time

LH: How could you tell?

LC: I don't know what this says about my reflexes, but I should carry eye drops at all times, especially in stressful situations.

LH: Did you blink? At all? You're scaring me.

A few more things: the trigger warning we got for this play was essential. For those who've already read the book, they know what's coming. For those who haven't, it could be quite distressing.

I was intrigued by the way they sat us in rows, elbows almost touching and facing in opposite directions. I wondered why there was so much order when the play is about disarray.

I also think, now, that if you are going to read Blindness, you should do it in the dark with your eyes shut. Or wide open. And somebody should read it to you.

LC: Your point about the seating is an interesting observation, but I suppose you could interpret it as a kind of controlled chaos. The audience is one of the few visual elements to the show. Provided you're not keeping your eyes clenched shut, Lise, whenever the lights flickered on, I found myself quickly searching the space. The zig-zag arrangement of the seats is more dynamic than a bunch of neat rows. If that was how things were organized, you'd be looking at the back of the pod in front of you.

LC: What's the line that opens the show, again? "If you can see, look. If you can look, observe?" Whenever we'd get a bit of light, I was struggling to do that as much as I could. Where was I? Who was in the room with me? How were they seated: relaxed? Clutching the person next to them? Eyes wide or shut? And in each of those flashes, you never saw the person you came with — which adds a tiny dash of panic to the whole thing. 

LH: What did you feel like after you took off the headphones and walked out into the light?

LC: Like I needed eye drops, but I mentioned that already. 

I think we agree that the staging was pretty damned visceral, but I'll ask you a question we've been repeating to ourselves for the last year and change: did it feel like a night at the theatre to you?

LH: Hrm. Yeah, I think it did. The hush before it began felt like the way the air is a bit loaded before a play starts. And I didn't feel alone during the experience. Because of the way we were seated and knowing we were listening simultaneously, it did feel like a collective experience.  Yeah, it was a night at the theatre, strangely. Which, honestly, felt very reassuring.

It felt almost like a baby step — a way of easing an audience back into the physical space itself.- Leah Collins, CBC Arts

LC: Yeah, it felt almost like a baby step — a way of easing an audience back into the physical space itself. The energy was muted, naturally. I think the audience cap is around 50. But it felt good to return to those little rituals of seeing a show: gathering in the lobby, excitedly chatting as you're ushered out.

And that moment in Blindness where the empty theatre is revealed almost took me out of the story. It really threw me into our own reality, our own pandemic — and how theatres like this one have shown no signs of life for months. (Here's where you can make fun of me for being a cheesy drama queen.)

LH: No, I think you're on point. Honestly, I didn't carry the play with me afterward, which might be a sign of my emotional disconnect from the pandemic. But I was definitely very glad for my imperfect vision, all the way home. 

Blindness. Featuring Juliet Stevenson. Written by Simon Stephens. Directed by Walter Meierjohann. Presented by Mirvish Productions. To Aug. 29. (Fall engagement: Sept. 24 to Oct. 24.) Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto. www.mirvish.com