Theater: An unsatisfying 1984 transferred to the stage

1984 by George Orwell

Adapted for the stage by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan
Starring Tom Sturridge, Olivia Wilde, Reed Birney
Hudson Theater, Manhattan
August 15, 2017

With our modern arts swamped with apocalyptic and dystopian views of society, it must have seemed like a good idea to produce one of the famed early models, George Orwell’s 1984. Written in 1949, then novel reflected this committed socialist’s disappointment with Stalin’s totalitarian metamorphosis of socialist principles into a police state, similar to the one that the defeated Hitler had established in Germany. The novel coined phrases that have become near-clichés, frequently referenced or copied by subsequent literature, TV, and movies: Big Brother, Doublespeak, Newspeak. Can this novel’s events still resonate? This adaptation of the novel became notorious for the observed vomiting and fainting of patrons in London and New York since its debut in 2014, at least suggesting one type of impact. The plot centers on Winston, a resident of Oceania, a three class society consisting of the Inner Party (2%), the middle class Outer Party (13%), and the Proletariat (85%). The middle class Winston rewrites historical documents to conform to Party doctrine, and gradually realizes how much he values freedom of expression, so begins rebelling against the all-observant state (video monitors are everywhere) in small and large ways. He begins writing an illegal narrative of how the Big Brother society works to control thought. Orwell’s ideas about futuristic totalitarianism are better than his dialogue and plot development, and the novel’s fame resides largely in its innovative and influential ideas. It is therefore problematic in stage transfer, since the plot is nothing special, and the ideas have become overly familiar. While the problem of a class disparity has great relevance to our era, Orwell was not describing economic stratification here, but political/dictatorial separation based on ideology. Hence, the play, sticking closely to Orwell’s plot, seemed to me of more anthropological or historical relevance than of current resonance.

This adaption begins and ends not with the 1984 story, but with the appendix to the novel written by Orwell to describe Newspeak, Oceana’s new language of control. The linguistic goal of Newspeak is to remove grey areas and nuance, limit vocabulary, and aim for ultimate clarity and order (e.g. “ungood” instead of “bad”, “speedful” instead of “rapid”). The prologue and epilogue show a group of writers/editors of our century debating whether or not Winston’s 1984 "rebellious" writings are in fact fake or genuine, perhaps an attempt by a fallen totalitarian society to influence later historians. I suppose this framing prelude/postlude technique was an attempt to make the play relevant to modern audiences thinking about fake news, but it seemed to detract from the dramatic impact, in particular Orwell's stark ending in which Winston succumbs to the state in mind and spirit. Orwell spends much of his novel laying out the parameters and details of the repressive state, and the adapters appropriately moved through that quickly, correctly assuming audience familiarity. But this left a thin skeleton of residual plot to adapt. The play seeks to achieve impact and shock value largely with its violence, sound, lighting and set design, spending a large part of the second act on the brutal state interrogation of Winston, replete with multiple torture modalities (apparently leading to the described fainting and vomiting, not in evidence anywhere around me).

This did not seem much different than what is commonly seen on recent TV or movies. Perhaps in order to further draw the audience into the violence and anxiety of a totalitarian society, the rapid-fire scene changes were punctuated by bright flashing lights and loud blasting airhorn pulses, providing a low grade form of audience torture. This worked for me, keeping me on edge throughout (i.e. waiting for the next blast), but the effect perhaps dimmed with repetition and somewhat overshadowed the actors. The set was typically austere and brutalist, lighting harsh. Ultimately the harsh set design and noise became the main emotional point of the presentation, and somewhat diminished the already thin plot (e.g. Winston’s love affair with Julia, a party informer who is also tortured). I sensed the audience wanted to hear more contemporary analogies, but this may not be the novel to do so. After all, we live with an incompetent (mainly) libertarian government (immigration policy excepted), not a highly competent totalitarian one like Oceania. The adaptation was written and premiered before Brexit or Trump, so does not qualify as one of the instant plays written to respond to the events of 2016. Whatever its motivation, this version of 1984 did not demonstrate basic dramatic virtues, while its shock values are better experienced in modern cinema. Dystopian art is best when connected to the neuroses of its own period, e.g. 1984 for cold war era Soviet angst, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaiden's Tale for feminist anxieties about the Moral Majority's counter-revolution and the Iran woman-repressing theocratic state. This production shows the risk in presenting dystopia out of its historical era.