George Orwell's 1984 has been having something of a resurgence of late - returning to the bestseller lists in the wake of the election of Donald Trump in the US and the rise of far-right politics worldwide, its bleak and unforgiving vision of the future of humanity under totalitarian rule is once again (and perhaps has always been) oddly prescient. No surprise then, that the Comedy Theatre in Melbourne was packed on Wednesday evening for a performance of the stage adaptation of this novel, on tour from the UK. This is actually the second time this production has been in Australia - developed by Headlong Theatre in association with the Almeida, it was brought out for the Melbourne Festival in 2015 and has since toured worldwide. It is a slick and uncompromising show, with a lot of truly thrilling theatrical moments.
The twin strengths of this show are its physicality, and the way in which that physicality interacts with and informs the technical stagecraft. The first thing that I noticed as a theatre maker was how flawless the scene changes were - aggressive light and sound often signified the end of a scene, and within seconds, the tableau on stage would be completely different. It was disorienting and unsettling, and set a tone and pace that rarely let up throughout the performance. The development of a repetitive and ritualistic physical vocabulary, used to best effect during the scenes in the cafeteria at the Ministry of Truth, allowed the cast to maintain this atmosphere of profound unsettlement. Similarly, the final third of the play, taking place in the Ministry of Love, where Winston is tortured, gave the cast the opportunity to develop strikingly simple theatrical tableaux, all the more horrific and affecting for their physical nonchalance. This comprehensive physicality was underscored throughout by excellent technical work, particularly through the use of lighting and video. Given the prevalence of screens, surveillance, recording, and voyeurism in Orwell's novel, the use of live-relay video recording seemed a natural fit for this production. Iconic scenes such as the two minutes hate made use of a large screen above the stage, and the physical reality of Winston's work 'unpeopling' dissenters was also projected onto this screen. Most interesting, however, was the use of video to tell the story of Julia and Winston's tryst, most of which occurred offstage and was seen by the audience only via the screen. This puts the audience in an intriguing position - we are made complicit in the perverse and pervasive surveillance of Big Brother, and in fact it is suggested that we ourselves may be Big Brother. We see into a room that is ostensibly private and inaccessible, and we watch the unfolding of an affair, and then we watch as that room and relationship are systematically and literally dismantled. It's all done with incredible technical nous, and the entire passage is deeply unsettling. Throughout the show, the decisive lighting design is absolutely exceptional - by turns aggressive and sensitive, it facilitates and underpins some very memorable theatrical images.
This show runs for 101 minutes, an auspicious time given the subject matter, but in achieving this thematically perfect run time, there is a bit of air left in the production which causes it to lag at times. Given the strength and efficiency of the physicality, some of the narration stands out as being a bit overdone and unnecessary, particularly when Winston and Julia are in their room. The story is so clear and unforgiving, that over-explanation feels trite and intrusive. Indeed, the succinctness of Orwell's image of totalitarianism as a boot stomping repeatedly on a human face begins to lose some of its potency when explained and re-explained. That being said, there are some real textual strengths to this adaptation, particularly in its use of fragmentary dialogue and repetition. Textual motifs are repeated by different characters, chopped up and moved around, causing the audience to question the relevance and source of the original quotation, and the nature of textual truth itself. Familiar phrases instantly become bywords for betrayal, and the empiricism of language is constantly undercut. This, of course, is one of the principles of Orwell's Newspeak, and allows the devastating consequences and potentialities of language to speak for themselves throughout the show. Once again, it is truly unsettling and very well handled by the cast and production team.
One textual quirk of this particular production is its use of Orwell's Appendix 'The Principles of Newspeak'. This appendix appears right at the end of the novel, and is often skipped over (I was guilty of this on my first reading of 1984), but in fact suggests a future beyond Big Brother, where Newspeak is treated as a subject of academic curiosity rather than as having completely overtaken English. This gives the reader a glimmer of hope at the end of what is an unrelentingly grim vision of the future, and creates an intriguing framing device for this play. The show begins with what appears to be a bookclub - a group of people seated around a table, trading fairly general platitudes about the significance of the text they have just read. Winston is also seated at the table, writing his diary. Have they been reading Winston's diary? Have they been reading 1984? Are these two texts one and the same? This interpretive frame heightens the focus of the play on language and the radically disruptive potential of unique expression in a totalitarian regime (once again, Newspeak aims to eliminate this possibility). This frame returns at the end, where Winston sits outside at the cafe, loving Big Brother and truly believing that 2 + 2 = 5. Indeed, in both appearances of the appendix, bookending the play, there is a suggestion of multiple timeframes - the implication is that there is something beyond Big Brother, where people can once again read and discuss text without fearing for their lives.
The imposition of this future timeframe highlights an important interpretive decision made in this play, and one that I think is perhaps the most subtle and effective. Works of fiction that deal with totalitarianism often have a complex relationship to time - Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading comes to mind here - as one of the key elements of totalitarianism is the elimination of alternative timeframes. The past is irrelevant, in the case of 1984 it is literally deleted or rewritten, and the future is vague and implied. Totalitarianism exists in an endlessly banal present, repetitive and unforgiving, where the implication is that no other timeframe exists. The social construction of temporality gives structure to thought and narrative, allows for reflection and hope, and allows humans to establish empathic connections across time and place. We are creatures of time, and we use temporality to underpin every story we tell about ourselves This production, in its fractured and repetitive movement and text, actualised the banality of totalitarianism's eternal present, and to my mind, this was the most unsettling thing about the whole show.
This was a slick and well-rehearsed show, with a comprehensive engagement with Orwell's text. It was bleak and unforgiving, and made up for its looser and less engaging moments with a physicality that was assured, pervasive, and utterly engaging. I missed out on this show when it first came to Melbourne in 2015, so I was thrilled to be able to catch it this time around. At a time where it feels like dystopian classics are returning to frightening and unwelcome relevance (Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is another example), it is wonderful to see artists taking up the mantle of creative resistance, bringing these terrifyingly cautionary stories to thrilling life.