Maeterlinck’s classics premiere at the Old Red Lion Theatre

One of my grand theories is that twentieth century theatre, inspired by the example of Dada and Duchamp, spent the last century trying to find a way for the script to imitate the visceral immediacy of the genre that would eventually become Live Art. Unfortunately, this means regarding western theatre as hermetically sealed and discarding the influence of international stage traditions that become prominent in Europe during the latter half of the century (Kathikali, for example, is listed as an exotic dance in one of my out-of-date text books: by 1994, a troupe was performing in my local church hall). It also denies the importance of the "visual theatre" movement - the work I coo about during manipulate - which isn't that fixated on the script.

Instead, I point to Genet's The Maids, Beckett's Godot and Sarah Kane's Crave, connecting their brutal themes and universal despair to the more personal visions of The National Review of Live Art (gone, but not forgotten).

Maeterlinck, however, is a reminder that the script was evolving without any help from proto-live artists in Zurich. The Intruder is 122 years old, was directed, at different times, by Stanislavski and Meyerhold and is a symbolic drama that has those absurdist signposts - a hostile universe and a meaning captured in the specific that has a broader implication.

The Intruder - joined by Maeterlinck's masterpiece, The Blind- arrives at the Old Red Lion Theatre in April. Although they won Nobel Prizes, they are not staged with the same frequency as Godot et al, but retain their heavy atmosphere and darkling mystery even in the twenty-first century. 

Tarquin productions are presenting this pairing on the back of a successful run of The Monk (Lyn Gardner was a fan). For director Benji Sperring, these shows are a chance to show how relevant and dynamic contemporary production can be - even with an old school script.  said: "The Blind and The Intruder will show that new theatre-makers like ourselves are creative, intelligent and not afraid to take risks, putting a thrilling twist on classic literature and embracing inspiration from artists and perfumers to computer games and zombie films," says Sperring. "The modern theatre-goer has many mediums in their lives, and we want to incorporate as many of these into the experience. Tarquin Productions is stretching the boundaries of modern-day theatre.”

The Blind- which I saw in an animatronic version during New Territories - stars a group of blind people, stuck in a forest. They ponder whether they can find their way out. The person who is supposed to be leading them home is a priest, but he has disappeared. Not at all symbolic, then, being written during the period when the church was being challenged by the emergence of an intelligent, scientific atheism. And Beckett can't have been inspired by the themes of hopelessness and insecurity.

The Intruder, meanwhile, operates like the misunderstanding of Schrodinger's Cat: is there something in the woodshed, or is the grandfather going senile?

Of course, what these plays reflect is the social instability that marked the rise of science and the retreat of Christianity: scripts being influenced by their time, yet retaining meaning a century later. I think we can safely ignore their influence, since science doesn't like to be reminded of how it isn't just the harbinger of light and reason, theatre would rather be timeless and universal and I don't want my grand theory about Live Art and the Script being undermined. 

The Blind and The Intruder are being performed at the Old Red Lion Theatre, Islington, from the 2ndApril to the 27th April (Tuesday-Sunday) at 7.30pm. Matinees on Saturday and Sunday are from 3.00pm. Tickets are £16 (£14 concessions). Pay What You Can Tuesdays and £10 Sundays apply.

The Blind

Adapted from the novel by the Nobel Prize winning Jose Saramago, The Blind is an unflinching look at the breakdown of social order following an epidemic of blindness. Victims of the illness are shoved away into a closed environment, isolated and left to their own devices. The inevitable dissolution of civilisation, and the compulsion of savage instinct, is played out over a spectacular set and through music, choreography and on an overpowering and massive scale.

The early scenes establish, briefly, that these victims are unexceptional: before the sickness hits, they are a broad cross-section of society. Yet their outward personae, their professions, their status, their joys, are stripped away with their sight: as the performance progresses, they are sucked into a vortex of chaos.

Yet rather than merely descending into an animalistic viciousness, the characters evolve their own version of society, bonded by rituals, a distorted and confused social consensus. There's no sense that the victims are interested in simple survival, as they replace their lost identities with a collective cohesion. Alien, frightening and violent it may they may be, but the rituals are recognisably human attempts to explain the horror around them.

The emphasis on choreography and music over word and script adds to the sense of dislocation, but also engages on a visceral, immediate level. Theatrically daring, it intelligently speculates on how humanity deals with forces beyond its control or comprehension.

Old College Quad, 3- 27 August