1984, Liverpool Playhouse (Headlong Theatre), tour continues Sherman Theatre, Cymru 5th – 9th November 2013, West Yorkshire Playhouse 12th – 16th November 2013 and Almeida Theatre, Islington 8th Feb – 29th Mar 2014
by Simon Haworth
If rats in a trap ultimately await Winston Smith in the white walled, clinically lit personal hell that is Room 101, then row A seat 8 in the gallery of Liverpool’s Playhouse, its miniscule leg room – I’m sorry, theatre, if I have preternaturally long legs – and another bout of mid-performance cramp surely await this reviewer by the time Big Brother orders his nefarious gang of cronies to finally man-handle me to the same place, in their pristine white hazmat suits and gas masks. Paranoia much? Rightly so, we all know how it turns out.
That’s the only quibble here. Headlong’s production of 1984 created by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan is stunning, absolutely terrific. There is real innovation, urgency and energy here, it’s exciting to see, they do things like turn the house lights on mid-performance to emphasise the feeling of delusion or loss of mind, and there’s no interval, so the escalation of disorder and nihilism is relentless. They also take a multimedia approach so the production is at least one quarter film, played out on a big screen just above and to the back of the stage. It doesn’t take a genius to guess the several layers of social comment behind that decision.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of this production is how it condenses Orwell’s narrative and the plot of 1984 so that it fits within a single space on stage and how the novel’s ideas don’t lose any impact within this, in fact as well as being part of that story, they are also redefined for the current moment. After the performance a few people behind me in the queue to get out were discussing the relevance of the production and how it made them re-think entertainment shows like The X Factor and surveillance society. To do this it zeroes in on key phrases or slogans from the novel such as ‘2+2=4 / 2+2=5’ (depending on your level of indoctrination) and ‘ignorance is strength’; these become earworms, much like the centrally important nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’ that is spoken, whistled, hummed, discussed and sung throughout the play by cast members. They keep working away at the characters, getting passed around like propaganda or ideology.
The idea is to set the play, and as much as possible put the audience, inside Winston’s mind through a psychological perspective. The production succeeds excellently at this, getting across the claustrophobia, neurosis, and feeling of going insane living under Ingsoc and Big Brother’s conditions in Airstrip One, Oceania. For example one particular canteen scene is played through several times, Christopher Patrick Nolan’s Martin half-menacingly half-nonchalantly pushes his trolley around in circles, even when there are boxes and papers strewn all over the floor blocking his path. Parsons (Gavin Spoke) and Syme (Matthew Spencer) eat the same lunch and have the same conversation about Parsons’ daughter’s outing of a thought criminal, as Charrington repetitiously, mechanically cleans tables and chairs, then half an imaginary table, Stephen Fewell showing more than ample mime skills.
What begins life as a communal area – functional tables and chairs, a trolley, a shelf full of files, three or four largeish windows that open and close (for food to be served through) and are reminiscent of the two way mirrors that are a staple of cop shows, and a few tellingly numbered doors – is rapturously torn apart in the love scene between Winston and Julia as snow falls from the rafters. Later it undergoes a metamorphosis into that famous room, plastic sheeting everywhere, six surgical assistants lined up on six chairs ready to torture until Winston finally admits that he just doesn’t know anything, and shouldn’t.
The first scene of the play takes place in this area and is very disorientating. There is a book group taking place, discussing Winston’s diary and yet he is part of the group, slipping in and out of the debate in various levels of self-awareness. It’s like an out of body experience and creates the feeling of being watched, of your life not being your own.
Hidden away, tellingly at the centre of the set, is the secret room in the antiques shop where Winston and Julia conduct their love affair, scenes from this location are broadcast by proxy on a screen above the actor-less stage. The production uses a couple of other innovative camera tricks. At the start there appears to be a camera in a desk lamp showing close-ups of Winston’s diary scribbles. In Room 101 one of the torturers follows Winston around with a miniature camera on a long cable magnifying the various contorted agonies that Mark Arends twists himself into during Winston’s ‘reintegration’, his tensing up during finger nail removal, coughing up blood after his teeth are pulled out, electrocution. The use of sound and light is horrifying but compelling here, each time Tim Dutton’s O’Brien, in his deceptively ordinary brown suit and thick-rimmed specs, shouts out the body part to be assaulted the lights go off and back on, brighter, with white noise and deafening static. Overall the production’s staging captures the novel’s uniquely old-fashioned but futuristic sensibility.
Similarly powerful and aggressive staging is used in a scene depicting the Two Minutes Hate where the main characters stand on or pick up chairs as if they’re about to launch them into, or more probably at, the audience. At one point the others pause in freeze-frame, the sound effects are muted, allowing Winston to express his own hate for the party in his ‘minority of one’ – ‘Down with Big Brother’ – before they start up again and congratulate him for showing such uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the process. Behind them on the big screen is shown pre-recorded footage of a thought criminal being led to his execution, not without being sado-masochistically interrogated one last time. The characters are baited into a frenzy of hostility and bloodthirstiness.
Winston and Julia’s love affair is made central. 1984 is a novel about love as well as a novel about dystopia, it’s a kind of catastrophically revolutionary love story sure, but it’s these emotions that drive Winston and Julia from the realm of thought and ideas further towards their actual, attempted, political engagement. This sense of the story can get a little bit lost amidst Orwell’s political theorising and the novel’s controversial terminology: newspeak/oldspeak, thought crime, telescreens, the world’s new geopolitical landscape and so on; but Headlong aren’t afraid to explore the more emotional side of things. The moment the two are discovered and captured is both breathtaking and heartbreaking It’s like a major drugs raid with helicopters, armed police and sweeping spotlight effects. Winston takes a final look at the woman he earlier calls ‘only a rebel from the waist down’ as she is sealed off in their room, that now resembles a cage, with yellow and black police tape and he is black bagged and shackled Guantanamo Bay style.
The cast is universally excellent. You can feel the pure commitment and cohesiveness that obviously runs through this adaptation from the writers, through to the creative team who help realise their vision and the actors themselves. It’s like you are watching the definitive stage version of the novel, so confident is it in its purpose and designs on the audience. Headlong’s thrilling production continues to tour, culminating with a longer run at the Almeida London. If you’re a fan of Orwell and 1984, of quality contemporary theatre in general, take an interest in politics and culture, or you’re just looking to avail yourself of something to do in the evening, make sure you see this. I’ll meet you in the place where there is no darkness.
Simon Haworth