THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: Adapt Wells by Bent and Gwinner, Gate, till 16 Marc

THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND: adapted from HG Wells by Simon Bent and Charlotte Gwinner
Gate Theatre: 020 7229 0706

Runs: 50m, no interval, till 16 March
Review: Very Lustig, 9 March 2002

Adaptation of HG Wells's 1904 parable. A theatrical curiosity staged with ingenuity and performed with commitment.For this show, we are advised to leave our coats in the foyer, as the auditorium isn't 'coat friendly'. The Gate's ever-ingenious designers have brought the outdoors indoors: a mossy, twig-strewn amphitheatre, which, as an American visitor commented, 'smells like my student dorm'.

The experience teases all the senses: sensory deprivation and confusion serve as a potent theatrical tool. There are eerie, unlocatable clicking sounds; and the opening scene is played in darkness. The unseen actors, British mountaineers in South America, negotiate the space, brushing against us. Their orotund formality evokes plus-fours and bustled frocks. The climbers' awe at their dizzying altitude turns to fretful consternation on realising that their guide – and their food-hamper – is missing.

Then follows the fastest costume-change in theatre history, as the lights come up and the company appear to have treaded the clothes in which the mind's eye dressed them for baggy cream peasants' clothing. Now we are the sighted ones, they the blind. They are gathered around the unconscious body of the guide who has, literally, fallen into their midst. They identify him by touch as human and take him into their small community – cue power struggle and collision of belief systems. In the country of the blind, the sighted man is not necessarily king.

It's a politically apt (and politically incorrect) metaphor: a people who regard sightedness as aberrant, and punish any deviation from their limited world view – they torture the guide into agreeing that the world, under its ceiling of rock, extends no further than a nearby wall.

Predictably, the guide falls in love with a young woman. Her parents decide to cure his 'disease of eyesight'. He absconds, leaving the story's potential tantalisingly unfulfilled.

The production, measured and coolly stylised, leaves little behind in the memory, except admiration for the Gate. At this address, time after time, we enter the tiny auditorium leaving behind our preconceptions about what constitutes theatre.

Cast:
Nunez: Martin Parr
Mr Pointer/ Jacob: Jon Rake
Medina Sarote: Alison Saddon
Mr Ball/Correa: Rob Storr
Mrs Slingsby/Elder: Susan Travers
Mr Will/Pedro: Joseph Traynor

Director: Charlotte Gwinner
Design: Lara Furniss
Sound: Paul Bannun
Lighting: Sarah Gilmartin

2002-03-12 22:34:49