Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday 3 October
Words by Melissa Blease
When George Orwell’s groundbreaking dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was first published, few people predicted that, 75 years later, the phrases Big Brother, Room 101 and the Ministry of Love would be better known as, respectively, the title of a reality TV series, a comedy chat show and a nightclub in Ibiza rather than a symbolic dictator, a torture chamber or part of the Interior Ministry, HQ for the Thought Police who enforce systematic brainwashing.
The novel has been adapted for cinema, radio, TV, theatre, opera and ballet multiple times, and its influence on all manner of pop culture concepts from songs, albums and video games to catwalks, comics and candy bars are legion. Do we really need to revisit 1984 again?
Yes, we do. Many of the novel’s ‘predictions’ regarding a society monitored by governmental agencies, wars created by international banks and technology replacing human social interaction are, today, real news that’s become old news; we’ve forgotten just how revolutionary – let alone cautionary – the original tale actually was. This startling new production, adapted by Ryan Craig, directed by Lindsay Posner and starring Keith Allen in what may well be his most challenging role to date, is exactly what theatre – let alone our wider culture in general – needs right here, right now.
The infamous ‘watching you’ motif is hammered home from the start of our trip back in time to a future that exists right now. A live, eye-shaped, roaming camera tracks the movements in the auditorium, zooming in and around audience members as they take to their seats and relaying their comings and goings on a big screen for all to see; tricksy, but chilling. The screen gives way to an equally chilling introduction to Comrade 6079, aka Winston Smith (a solid performance by Mark Quartley), confessing to ‘thought crimes’ while a disembodied voice quizzes him; from the off, we know for sure that nothing bodes well for our leading man.
We watch Winston create a temporary comfort zone with his clandestine lover Julia (Eleanor Wyld) in a camera-free woodland glade and a room in what they assume to be a ‘safe house’. It’s an unlikely pairing as there seems to be little substantial chemistry of any kind between them, least of all romantic. We do, however, see, feel and almost taste their confusion, fear and desperation to rebel; by the time we’re with Winston towards the denouement of the drama as he’s tortured in a scene that’s at once excruciatingly sickening to watch but breathtakingly captivating in the theatrical sense, the chemistry Quartley has created with the audience is palpable.
Keith Allen’s outstanding take on Inner Party senior member O’Brien is Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil personified: as self-assuredly nefarious, menacing, pious, smug and repulsive as a sadistic wannabe dictator gets, and occasionally apparently so bored with always, always being right that he has to inflict just a little more physical, psychological pain on one of his subjects to remind himself how powerful he is.
Meanwhile, throughout the whole, harrowing drama, this uber-sensory production owes as much to the creative team (Justin Nardella’s evocative, intelligent set, costume and video design, Giles’ Thomas evocative sound design and Paul Pyant’s stark/disquieting lighting in particular) as it does to the exemplary characterisations from key members of the cast.
If ever there was a tale that best reminds us of the often taken for granted privileges that are freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of emotion, it’s George Orwell’s 1984. To miss seeing this thoroughly gripping adaptation would be a crime verging on Serious Contemporary Cultural Sin territory.
So: do we really need to revisit 1984 again? I’ll keep asking the question until you give me the right answer.