The Full Cast. Photo Credit: Simon Annand
Simon Jenner, October 29th 2024
Adaptations often lend a sinking feeling: particularly this terrible prophesy written by George Orwell in 1948. Given there’s a lauded site-specific1984 at Hackney Town Hall the prospect of another touring adaptation of a novel doesn’t inspire. But then you might see it’s adapted by Ryan Craig and directed by Lindsay Posner. Theatre Royal Bath’s 1984 arrives at Theatre Royal Brighton till November 2nd.
This production feels swept-up with fast pacing and tight plotting. It’s an intense distillation. It cleverly elides a huge cast (made up for in pre-recorded material) with three understudies as background and the focus on just four characters.
We’re in a dystopia where three totalitarian regimes rule the world: each allied with one fighting another, switching sides by pre-arrangement, to keep hatred and foreigner firmly scapegoated and regimes in control.
Control is total. Every minute, even in your small flat, is monitored: the camera on at any time. Sex is almost banned, friendship too, hatred encouraged. People are reported by their children for “thought-crime”. Mind-control is aided by the gradual elimination of most language: deviating mentally will be impossible. Language is Winston’s job. Orwell’s story charts one man’s unimaginable decision to stand up to the regime covertly. Winston Smith struggles to articulate an identity, and finds love.
Craig ratchets this up with fictional interventions. A group of wedding guests in Eastasia are killed: Winston has to alter this to “terrorists”. Craig isn’t known as the author of The Holy Rosenbergs for nothing, and this, with two 16-year-olds publicly hanged for sex (“it’s more thrilling when their legs are free to kick” says Julia, also publicly) ratchet up cruelty more than in the book. Horrors have moved on Craig suggests.
Craig naturally skips background though it occasionally needs signalling. The Proles – 85% of the population left to their devices but still surveilled – are unexplained. It begs why Winston Smith (Mark Quartley) who opens with a declaration of his guilt six months previously, bought a banned diary in a junk shop. Or why a woman can sing ‘Oranges and Lemons’ – a neat dovetailing from somewhere else.
Eleanor Wyld and Mark Quartley. Photo credit: Simon Annand
Justin Nadella’s stripped set and boiler-suite costumes are dwarfed by his video design: a grey TV eye takes up backdrop most of the time. It feels retro 1950s with grainy old black-and-white TV, yet with digital deletion of files. Computer commands as appeared in the 1980s lend a prism on how mass surveillance might develop under such a regime.
If you know the novel, there’s surprises, dovetailing of themes, backstories to explain Winston’s fear of rats. Craig responds to what time has wrought on our understanding, yet stayed true to Orwell’s vision.
Quartley is a younger Winston than some (Vincent Price was first on TV film, in 1954). It makes his suppressed desires the more vibrant. Quartley gives a masterclass in flinch and tensions knotted-up from childhood. Only one person can release him. Yet Quartley also lends a shimmering dignity about to be assailed. His performance in the torture scene is visceral, pitilessly projected in fight director Brett Yount’s realisation.
Winston is friendly with garrulous naïve Parsons (David Birrell, a feat of bathos and pathos) a man whose daughter Lily is eager to betray anybody. Consciously Parsons praises this: his subconscious goes elsewhere.
Birrell’s second-act monologue is a tour-de-force of terrified delusion. He earlier warns Winston off Anti-sex-Leaguer Julia (Eleanor Wyld). It transpires she has anything but denunciation in mind.
David Birrrell. Photo credit: Simon Annand
Julia’s sexual candidness is a life-enhancer of modern fiction, realised against a crushing backdrop. Wyld brings gleams of warmth and frankness to Julia, indeed a playful sensuality; autonomy too. Trysts in the “golden country” away from surveillance enjoy an exuberance (with vernal backdrop) wholly different to the walled-in grey of the rest.
Wyld’s not the most intense Julia: instead she embodies Winston’s perception of youth still full of hope.
Paul Pyant’s lighting irradiates this; Nardella’s video projects the lovers on back-screen as they lie prone. Giles Thomas (also with Robert Sword, composer) riffles naturalistic birdsong snatches against ominous thuds elsewhere. With scenes like 101 the imaginative thing has been done: blackout.
Keith Allen, the urbane O’Brien, from “inner party” Ingsoc, reels Winston then Julia in, tests their willingness to rebel. Plying things they’ve not known like wine, O’Brien’s edition of Hamlet, Allen’s voice is velvety, confiding, exuding control. Allen in interview states O’Brien’s jealous of Winston for finding love. That’s certainly a new take.
Little of that comes through, save in a pass at Julia after Winston leaves. Rebuffing him, Julia emerges from somewhere with a love-bite and contraband. This is the Julia who might have had 40 lovers. Wyld and Craig further remove her from revolutionary zeal. Julia stands for life not struggle; Wyld embraces Julia’s pragmatic desires: like escape to unmonitored islands.
Keith Allen and Mark Quartley Photo Credit: Simon Annand
The shorter 45-minute second act (the whole comes in at two hours 15) is closer to the novel. The interrogation and aftermath need to be seen.
There’s self-effacing ensemble work by understudies Lewis Hart, Paul Sockett, and particularly Niamh Bennett, water-carrier and assistant torturer, implacably void.
The pre-recorded team are a line-up in themselves. Blokey newbie Gladwell (Oscar Batterham), dismissive Medic (Marin Marquez), but some dark radiance from Dona Croll as Newscaster; Finbar Lynch’s vocally chiselled Goldstein; Zubin Varla’s over-zealous Syme hailing the end of language; confessional ‘traitor’ Ampleforth (Matthew Horne); Jamie Dee almost unrecognisable as a Woman and Big Brother, replete with kind eyes and reassuring voice realised by Nicholas Woodeson. A child is played by Asia-Sky Fenty.
This is the fleetest most theatrical version I’ve seen for some time. Telegraphic in its conveying a nightmare world, it nevertheless does so by lightning strokes: quite literally in electric scenes of torture and violence. Cast are exemplary, three classical actors consummately realising what Craig’s distilled. Allen commands with the nuance of urbanity, never rising to a snarl. It’s chilling and extends to Big Brother.
By writing 1984, Orwell as Martin Seymour-Smith observed, may just have prevented it. Indeed I’d suggest every dystopia imagined is one whack-a-mole against that form manifesting. But we need to keep imagining. Then we might prevent what’s already happening from being the future: “a boot stamping on a human face forever.”
Writer George Orwell Adaptor Ryan Craig Director Lindsay Posner, Set Costume and Video Designer Justin Nardella, Lighting Paul Pyant, Sound Designer Giles Thomas, Composers Robert Sword & Giles Thomas, Associate Video Designer Stanley Orwin-Fraser, Associate Director George Jibson, Design Associate Lorelei Cairns.
Movement Director Ira Mandela Siobhan, Fight Director Brett Yount.
Casting Director Ginny Schiller CDG, Production Manager David Sthothard, Costumer Supervisor Magdalena Seyfried, Props Supervisor Mercedes Moles-Jones, CSM Paul Ferris, DSM William Buckenham, Technical ASM Christie Cheng, ASM Niamh Bennett
Video and Sound Operator Nick Laws, Wardrobe Manager Lucy Howarth
