The Ring, BAC - theatre review

The audience is plunged into total blackness with just a set of headphones for company
Light comes out of the gloom: The Ring
22 April 2013

I’m increasingly interested in the theatre of darkness — and I don’t mean that metaphorically. Companies such as Punchdrunk, dreamthinkspeak and Sound and Fury have played fruitfully of late with the idea of plunging their audiences into destabilising total blackness, and originator/director David Rosenberg does the same thing here, for 50 uninterrupted minutes.

“The most important thing is the darkness” are the last words we hear in the light from Michael (Simon Kane). After that we’re on our own, with just a set of headphones for company. They’re not any old headphones, though, but pieces specially fitted to transmit Ben and Max Ringham’s “binaural” sound technology, which affords the astonishing sensation of being immersed in a 3D landscape of noise. Voices bubble up around us and whisper continually in our ears. Michael must have been joined secretly by dozens more performers, we think. If we were daring enough, we could reach out and touch the actors. Mustn’t he? Couldn’t we?

The narrative itself, by Glen Neath, relating a sometimes confused mixture of peculiar group therapy and urban ghost story, could usefully be honed into sharper shape. Far more interesting, however, than the question of quite what the mysterious Frances has done to provoke such strong emotions from her peers are our sharpened reactions to what we perceive once our dominant sense, sight, is taken from us. As if from some primeval urge I found myself adopting a fight or flight position when I heard the suggestive sound of smashing glass and a knife being drawn. It’s thrillingly disconcerting to spend a play cowering from a physical attack that never comes.

Until March 28 (020 7223 2223, bac.org.uk)

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