Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Mark Arends, Tim Dutton, Stephen Fewell, Christopher Patrick Nolan, Matthew Spencer, Gavin Spokes, Mandi Symonds, Hara Yannas, Richard Bremmer, Joshua Higgott.
To do justice to arguably one of the finest pieces of English Literature of the 20th Century on stage takes a team so immersed into what they are trying to achieve, that all else is secondary. To bring to life the horror that awaits Winston Smith from the spectre of Big Brother that is stamped like an impregnable tattoo all over the face of decency in 1984 takes a fantastic director, an adaptor of work who can make the simmering tension boil over again and again and two men you can believe in from start to finish to capture the spirit of a nation, of a world that has become the stuff of nightmares.
George Orwell’s masterpiece looms across English literature like a giant striding through the countryside and whose shadow is cast across every work that tries to allude itself to its mast. The dishonour, the decay and lies told by Governments whilst keeping the poor below and the questioning ear-marked for brutality and death is one that sits and eats at the very fabric of society. A nation under watch at all times, each person scrutinised and checked out for feelings of malcontent towards those in charge is one that keeps every right minded human being scared of what we allow to be done in our name, especially when its told that it is to keep us safe.
This adaptation by Headlong Theatre, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan goes further than anyone has ever dared take the book before and with that it makes the feeling of discontent, of ever increasing wariness in a system designed to trip you up for saying the wrong thing and the anger and fear that dwells within as the audience is shown just what happens to those who enter Room 101, somehow more terrifying and chilling than could ever be imagined when reading the book.
With a cast that carried the play forward at a pace that news gets churned out in today’s 24 hour information society, Mark Arends and the superb Tim Dutton stood out as Winston Smith and the malevolent O’Brien in such a way that you could not believe your luck as a theatre goer to see two impressive actors giving such a distinguished performance.
The set, designed by Chloe Lamford should take many awards for its cold heart and bright blinding white nature and it was against this that the play reached its eye of the storm distressing and unnerving conclusion.
For a book that really has never been captured fully for its worth on film, this adaptation by Headlong is worthy of all that George Orwell would have hoped to imagine.
Ian D. Hall