Fear wears a mask in the kingdom of the blind
Théâtre UBU’S Les Aveugles is a hybrid oddity – a robotic theatre piece mounted in an art gallery as an installation. Disembodied plastic masks act as screens for film projections of 12 faces that glow from an otherwise pitchblack stage. The audience is led in through the dark, guided by a string of lights on the floor. In order to see Les Aveugles, you are asked to enter into the world of the blind.
Created in 2002 when Théâtre UBU artistic director Denis Marleau was an artist in residence at the Musée d’art contemporain, Les Aveugles has since toured around the world, being presented 700 times in 17 countries.
Now it seems more at home than ever in Salle Beverley Webster Rolph of the Musée, next door to a revamped Place des Arts, where a video wall offers constant multimedia distraction.
Technolo g y rules in Marleau’s adaptation of this melancholy play by Belgian playwright, poet and essayist Maurice Maeterlinck, written in French in 1890. A noted symbolist, Maeterlinck is best known for The Blue Bird, first seen at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Constantin Stanislavski and later adapted into various films (including an ill-fated 1976 George Cukor flick starring Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda) and an opera (by Albert Wolff).
In Les Aveugles, 12 blind people (variations on the images of two actors, Céline Bonnier and Paul Savoie) are abandoned in a forest on an island by their caretaker, a priest. Their isolation is total, their fear immobilizing. As they vainly await the priest’s return, their exchanges are enigmatic, deadpan, but very clearly articulated in international French.
Anyone addicted to the works of Samuel Beckett, who liked to bury his char- acters up to their necks, will feel at home with the action-averse Maeterlinck. They’re both very existential. Beckett’s sense of the absurd, however, is often comic. If there’s levity in Les Aveugles, this production blocks it out.
No doubt Maeterlinck, who insisted that actors should behave like marionettes, would have loved Marleau’s interpretation of this work. It’s interesting to note that some of the faces emote more effectively than others and are more compelling to watch. One female visage hams it up with too much blinking and grimacing and becomes annoying. Another one steadily comes across as morose as a martyr.
More like a seance than a play, Les Aveugles is hypnotic to the point of being soporific. (When you find yourself dozing off during a 45-minute show, you begin to question its intent as well as its form and content. Are we supposed to go into a trance?) The effect is not unpleasant. The voices are superb, the presentation symphonic, and the bench seating bearable. But the fatalism of the piece is not likely to lift anyone’s spirits.
When we hear the final plea for mercy that signals the end of this litany of woes, it’s tempting to utter a grateful “amen.”
Les Aveugles, presented by Théâtre UBU, continues at Salle Beverley Webster Rolph of the Musée d’art contemporain, 185 Ste. Catherine St. W., until March 11. English performances are March 3 and 10 at 1 p.m. For a full list of performance dates and times, visit www.macm.org. Tickets are available via Admission; call 514-790-1245 or visit www.admission.com.