Entry to Donmar Warehouse’s sound installation Blindness is shrouded both in mystery and black curtains. The reveal, accompanied by mandatory headphones, speaks to theatre’s social distancing challenges of the era where sparsity and atmosphere are at loggerheads. Two by two, we are dotted uniformly around a large stage area inside a larger empty warehouse as seemingly ubiquitous flouros change colour overhead.

Blindness at Adelaide Festival 2022. Photo © Helen Maybanks.

Our proprioception sufficiently challenged by taking a seat, we embark on a journey helmed by Juliet Stevenson as Storyteller and then as Doctor’s Wife, who voices an adaptation of the brilliant 1995 novel by the Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago.

Directed by Walter Meierjohann, this adaptation by Simon Stephens commences verbatim, but after the narration establishes this gripping parable of loss brought about by a plague, the asymptomatic Doctor’s Wife takes the driver’s seat of storytelling, portraying a woman – duplicitous for altruistic purposes – on a crusade against the odds.

If we are all listening to the same audio it is not obvious. Conceptually and physically, this is a challenging piece of theatre and tests our comfort...