Baffled by the shift
Blinded by the Sun
By Stephen Poliakoff
Directed by Sandra Bates
With Peter Kowitz, Lorraine Bayly, Andrew McFarlane, Tammy MacIntosh, Norman Kaye, Tina Bursill, Kate Fischer, Ron Graham
Ensemble Theatre
The Playhouse, Sydney Opera House
Review by Allen Myers
Set in the chemistry department of an English regional university, Blinded by the Sun centres on Albert, unexpectedly promoted to head a department whose claim to fame is two widely respected researchers.
One of these researchers, Christopher, announces that he has achieved a breakthrough in the search for a "sun battery" — a device that uses sunlight and a combination of catalysts to separate hydrogen from ordinary water.
Fame and fortune descend on Christopher and seem certain to rub off on the rest of the department. But then Albert begins to get doubts. Christopher has announced his results before publishing them in a scientific journal, citing the need to patent his process before disclosing it. Albert discovers evidence indicating that Christopher's demonstration may have been faked.
As the first act ends, we were on the edge of our seats to see how Albert's investigation would unfold and how it would impact on Christopher and on Elinor, the other researcher.
We returned from the 20-minute interval to discover that, onstage, four years had passed. Albert is now a well-known science populariser, with several successful books behind him. Christopher is at some other university, trying to rebuild his career. Joanna, the history student whose relationship with Albert formed an intriguing sub-plot in the first act, is in New York.
Even more disorienting than the unexpected passage of time and these unseen developments is a shift in plot focus to the impact of economic "rationalism" on the university. Albert, who during the interval has also undergone a personality change for which nothing in the first act prepared us, is now the hatchet man for cutbacks to the department.
Playwright Stephen Poliakoff evidently saw some logical or dramatic link between the themes of the two acts. But in an effort to convince the audience, his characters spend much of the second act commenting on and trying to explain what happened in the first, so the brisk pace of the opening is another casualty.
Good performances from Peter Kowitz as Albert and Tammy MacIntosh as Joanna help to lift the evening, but I was amazed to read in the program that Blinded by the Sun won the 1996 Critics Circle Award in England. This is a bigger mystery than the sun battery.