Much of the concepts conceived and neologisms coined by Orwell have become staples of conversation today – Room 101, Big Brother, Doublespeak and Thought Police – all pepper cultural debate, but they don’t feel jaded in this powerful production.
Orwell’s cautionary tale, published in 1949, imagines a future in which members of a socialist society are ruled over by “The Party” and the totalitarian leader Big Brother. “Comrades” exist under the mass surveillance and censorship of the “Thought Police” who monitor them through telescreens.
Anyone who falls foul of the regime – “thought criminals” – is “vaporised” – secretly murdered and erased.
Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth, falsifying the past by rewriting historical records. This is a world where, as we are so frequently reminded, he “who controls the present, controls the past”.
Secretly he harbours thoughts of rebellion and contempt for The Party. He finds an ally – and a lover – in Julia who works in the fiction department.
As the two embark on an illicit affair, and Winston begins chronicling his “heretical” thoughts in a diary, he becomes increasingly zealous – something which frightens Julia who admits she is only a “rebel from the waist down”.
The staging is simple but highly effective with a screen which largely takes form as the iconic eye shaped telescreen. In turns, the eye broadcasts announcements from the party, watches and films Winston and others and later projects these recordings.
Matthew Horne, star of TV’s Gavin and Stacey, and veteran stage actor Finbar Lynch make cameos on the screen, but do not appear on stage.
The cast is stellar across the board. Mark Quartley competently captures the quiet rebellion of Winston and his performance in the torture scene is deeply impressive in its physicality. Naked, bloody and crushed into submission, he lies crunched and contorted – a husk of his former self.
Eleanor Wyld sparkles as she shifts from her disguise as a fanatical follower of the party to a playfully mischievous subverter. In the relentless darkness of this play, she and David Birrell, who excellently handles the pitifully naïve Parsons, bring moments of light relief.
The real star of the play is Keith Allen, whose performance of O’Brien is slick and effortless. Urbane as he swills red wine and muses on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he becomes utterly savage as his façade falls.
His dogged “re-education” of Winston, though harrowing to watch, is, in my opinion, the outstanding scene in this remarkable production.
1984 runs until Saturday, November 2 at the Theatre Royal in Brighton.
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