This Catalan adaptation of British playwright Hattie Naylor’s play Going Dark is an understated yet ambitious production that transforms the Espai Lliure into a planetarium; a claustrophobic yet expansive dark space, where the wonders of the universe are projected onto a stage dressed up like the moon’s surface.

With significantly fewer resources than the 2012 London production, which counted on immersive theatre specialists Sound&Fury, the Catalan team has created a child-like set, something reminiscent of Michel Gondry’s film The Science of Sleep or the clunky puppetry of 1960’s TV show Thunderbirds (to which the play makes reference): a vintage imagination of space exploration and the dangers and wonders you might find there. 

Anna (Miriam Iscla) is an astronomer who gives talks at the planetarium. When experiencing problems with her peripheral vision she is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a rare eye disorder where sight is reduced to blindness. With it come terrifying ‘hallucinations’, tricks of the eye that appear to her like an attack of birds. Anna faces this with stoicism; her greatest concern is for her continuing care of her 6-year-old daughter Maria – voiced by Daniela Lucas. 

Lengthy and at times too didactic, the play is carried along by the sort of enthusiasm that we associate with cosmologists as well as instigating a profound respect for those who navigate the world without sight. In a shift on perspectives, as sight is reduced the world expands into a cacophony of sound, a tremendous bombardment on the senses.