Review – Blind Date

I’d heard of a Fringe show a few years back where an audience of one gets blindfolded and pushed around in a wheelchair in a disorientating and frightening sensory-deprived experience. I thought if these are the lengths contemporary theatre practitioners need to go to feel relevant then it’s probably a lost cause.

This time, I’d been asked to attend ‘Blind Date‘. This show is arranged by appointment. I was e-mailed a questionnaire I had to fill in, the questions did feel like it was from a dating agency. You’re also e-mailed the questionnaire answers of your guide, the respective answers serve as conversations starters.

Then there’s the blindfold. You’re blindfolded on this date, then guided around town for about an hour, making conversation as you go.

This can be disconcerting for some, but the perpetrators of this experience aren’t trying to freak you out – polite dating behaviour still applies. It had a lot of the same contrivance as formal dating and I’d had experience with similar blindfold exercises, so this combined them. For me a lot of the conversation was self referential as we discussed aspects of the project, the loss of control, the reactions of some ‘audience’ subjects and the work of guiding.

I undergo a short series of sweet-natured exercises, while some have found the whole experience downright romantic. Gender preferences weren’t on the questionnaires, so for two apparently straight guys going through these motions there’s maybe more comedy than romance.

But the oddest part of this Fringe show isn’t so much the guided walk, but the disorientating transition in and out of the blindfold. Waiting with eyes closed, I never see my guide. I could tell we visited Tuxedo Cat for a drink initially, but I was lost by the time I was returned to where I was found.

When my blindfold comes off and vision’s restored, the guide’s disappeared, like it never happened.