Blind Man's Song

Mime isn't the most popular of disciplines. And although it might be unfair to land the blame entirely at the door of this mawkish, tedious offering from Theatre Re, it certainly isn't helping the cause.

Two masked performers create the whirl of emotions inside a blind man's head using dance and mime, to the live piano and violin accompaniment of Alex Judd. His repetitive and meandering soundtrack combines with the production's Magritte-inspired aesthetic, all bowler hats and wool overcoats, to create an aesthetic of haze-heavy Francophone romanticism: like the street scenes from Amélie endlessly spun out in murky darkness. Guillaume Pigé and Selma Roth's choreography is similarly hackneyed, relying heavily on a few set gestures: there's a lot of spinning around on a cast iron bed of wheels, fumbling shakily about with canes, almost kissing (masks) and endlessly swapping a felt bowler hat between them.

There are some striking visual moments, but the performers' bodies aren't even nearly expressive enough to make up for the lost powers of their voices and faces. And this loosest of plots emphasises blind people's vulnerabilities, rather than their abilities, to create an atmosphere of mawkish sentimentalism.

With little tension or suspense, the scarcely differentiated interludes lag. "That seemed so much longer than an hour," muttered the woman next to me. Its wittiest moment comes when Guillaume Pigé takes off his stocking to tell us to spread the word on Facebook and Tinder: a show this wet would be bound to extinguish all romantic sparks.

 

https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/blind-mans-song#overview