This UK production, by Headlong along with Nottingham Playhouse and the Almeida Theatre, was presented at the 2015 Melbourne Festival, and such was its reception that it’s now touring Australia with a local cast – whose British accents seem so natural I double-checked this fact. A much more sinister uncertainty about reality is at the heart of this stage adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian novel, which is as relevant as ever in this age of “alternative facts”, fake news and mass surveillance.

In an adaptable set reminiscent of Thatcher’s Britain, with its tired looking wood panelling and utilitarian furniture, 1984 opens with the protagonist, Winston writing in a journal. Grainy live video of his scribbling appears on a large screen permanently above the set, making his world’s oppressive surveillance powerfully apparent. This screen is frequently used to represent the totalitarian state’s all-seeing eye, which even peers into the room off-stage where his supposedly secret trysts with fellow rebel, Julia, occur. It’s also the mouthpiece for propaganda.

19841984. Photos © Shane Reid

Unlike the Winston of Orwell’s novel, whose fears and frustrations are mostly internalised “thought crimes,” he vocalises them in this play adapted and directed by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan. A theatrical necessity, this would be implausible amid constant, intrusive surveillance, including a Stasi-like atmosphere of mutual surveillance, but there’s a growing sense that Winston’s reality is unreliable. Played with skittish intensity by Tom Conroy, this is a man in a state of psychosis.

Does he really shout “Down with Big Brother” while surrounded by his co-workers? Is the reading group that bookends the play really assessing Winston’s journal years in the future, or does he just imagine them? The voiceover, the scenes of déjà vu, and comments that presage the future increasingly suggest that everything played out may actually be his warped recollections from inside a torture chamber: Room 101.

Paul Blackwell, Terence Crawford and Tom Conroy in 1984Paul Blackwell, Terence Crawford, Tom Conroy

Underlining this notion is the sudden darkness, intense, strobing light, and loud, jarring sounds between scenes. These muted versions of actual torture techniques provoke a visceral sense of unease in the audience. When Chloe Lamford’s primary set is rapidly dismantled by masked military – a shocking expression of the destruction of Winston’s clandestine life with Julia – the stage is transformed into Room 101. This bare, pale grey, brightly lit space is an unnervingly soulless setting for Winston’s gory torture.

His blood, an illicit chocolate wrapper and the red dress Julia secretly wears all pop amid the washed-out colour scheme of a society in which beauty and difference, as well as truth and nuanced language, are rapidly being expunged. Lamford’s costumes are the epitome of dreary.

Tom Conroy and Ursula Mills in 1984Tom Conroy and Ursula Mills

The cast of eight, directed by Corey McMahon for this Australian tour, also make dreary a virtue playing characters whose personalities are flattened out under surveillance. Ursula Mills is suitably rigid and cold as Julia, but lacks conviction in her moments of freedom with Winston (Is this intentional? After all, Orwell wrote her rather two-dimensionally). Terence Crawford’s O’Brien is suitably chilling and, as Parsons, Paul Blackwell evokes Jim Broadbent’s befuddled father in the Bridget Jones films.

Even though 1984 is a familiar story, this production disturbs and surprises anew. It delivers fresh perspectives on the novel’s reality, and reminds us how timeless, and one might now say, timely, Orwell’s insights are. Several lines of dialogue have an unsettling ring of truth, such as the population never looking away from their screens long enough to realise what’s actually going on.


1984 is at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, until June 10, before moving on to Brisbane (June 14-18), Sydney (June 28-July 22), Canberra (July 25-29) and Perth (August 4-13).

Tickets

Limelight subscriptions start from $4 per month, with savings of up to 50% when you subscribe for longer.