1984

Hate to waste good words... I went to see 1984 for the FT but unfortunately they ran out of space for the review. So here's the review anyway, definitely recommend catching it before it closes on Saturday.

1984, Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester

Three Stars

Big Brother; Room 101; 2 + 2 = 5: the famous motifs within George Orwell’s Newspeaking 1949 novel run the risk of becoming more important than the story itself. Certainly, Matthew Dunster (who also directs his new adaptation in the round at Manchester’s Royal Exchange) is intent on reclaiming Orwell’s original vision of a nightmarish, totalitarian and dystopian Britain from the clutches of reality television shows.

The last stage performance of 1984 - at London’s BAC just before Christmas - involved puppets and was essentially played for laughs, but adaptations are, on the whole, rare. Dunster opts for a traditional retelling, but though he expertly sets up the Orwellian world of never-ending war and total surveillance by Big Brother, to begin with his overall-clad Outer Party members seem as stilted as the society in which they’re subjugated. It isn’t Winston Smith’s (a nicely bemused Jonathan McGuinness) realisation that his job revising history is ridiculous which sets the play alight, but a proper love story.

Winston’s illicit relationship with Julia is perfectly judged: Caroline Bartleet plays this mechanic working on the Ministry’s novel writing machine with jolly hockey sticks charm, which soon gives way to the sexy but pragmatic young woman who is famously “a rebel from the waist down”. It lends this particular 1984 the interesting sense of having two star-crossed lovers at its heart, and their sheer sexuality becomes a form of rebellion in itself.

Their hearts are not just broken, they’re virtually ripped out as Winston and Julia are completely betrayed by the system and each other. It makes for a gruelling second half. Apart from a virtuoso monologue from Paul Moriarty as the rebel Goldstein - so impressive the action is actually interrupted by applause - the rest of 1984 is essentially one long torture scene at the Ministry of Love, to the strains of discordant techno. This is where the perfect casting of a virtually emaciated McGuinness comes to the fore, but the pace slackens through repetition.

But then, perhaps Dunster is right to ram home the point that supposed civilized nations are still using such methods to assert power in the 21st century. It’s the only time this adaptation is as crude as Orwell’s famous idea of a “boot stamping on a human face forever”: for the most part, there’s a lightness of touch and, crucially, humour, here. ‘Doubleplusgood’, as the Newspeak dictionary would probably put it.