As you approach the theatre attendants, with your specially-made Victory Gin cocktail from the Cast bar downstairs, there’s a laminated notice stating 1984 is not a suitable play for those with a nervous disposition.
As someone who definitely has a nervous disposition but is also a lover of horror and the horrible, I usually laugh those signs off. With 1984, however, I am wholeheartedly backing up this message. Prepare to have your disposition tested.
During this play you will be joining Winston Smith – Comrade 6079, Party member and thought criminal – for 101 minutes of torment. The audience is assaulted with bangs, alarms, and gunshots; weird ringing static like tinnitus from unidentifiable corners of the theatre; and lights that flicker, flash, and plunge into darkness with little warning. During one strikingly gut-churning scene utilising fake blood, flashing lights, torturous sound effects, and other props I don’t want to spoil, I nearly puked my Victory Gin onto the unsuspecting heads of patrons below. I must have started convulsiving in about twenty times. When I left the Nottingham Playhouse theatre I emerged with a tension headache from the near-constant cringing, jaw clenching, and grimacing I’d been doing. At times, experiencing the play genuinely felt like going mad.
George Orwell’s 1984 is a frightening book, and Duncan Macmillan and Robert Icke’s adaptation for the stage brings that out with familiar and skillful fingers. One of the reasons both the book and the play manage to be so frightening is that the questions they ask are so significant. If we are selfish in order to stay safe, is that collusion or rebellion? Can betrayal be self-care? The play takes delight in harnessing that cultural guilt and making it feel personal. If your experience is anything like mine, prepare to leave feeling empowered and ashamed.
Ahead of its world tour, 1984 has returned from London’s West End to its roots in Nottingham, England, from the 9th to the 26th of September, and the whole cast and crew at Nottingham Playhouse do a brilliant and inventive job of scaring the crap out of the audience.
I thought audience-members who hadn’t read the books might have been confused, and I wasn’t sure I was into the chronology and pacing of the play at first. Macmillan and Icke’s vision becomes clear as the play goes on, though, and it’s easy to take a plunge into the world in front of you. I was worried that with the non-chronological setting that important aspects of the novel might be missed; but the play viscerally captures the feel and meaning of the book, and all of the important lines and ideas have made it in. At its centre is an ingenious use of the seldom-read appendix, which creates a talking, breathing doublethink in front of and within the audience.
The set, props, and lighting are all cleverly designed and extensively considered, providing a timeless and anachronistic set and costume in sepia-tones and scratchy-looking brown and beige clothes – until the bright, twitching white of the Ministry of Love and Room 101 finally take over. The setting makes it clear that this dystopia could be 1984, or today, or the future – or all three.
The cast find a home in the set expertly, and every character is played with guts and understanding. Matthew Spencer’s portrayal of Winston is especially captivating – on my first reading of 1984, I loved Winston; on my second, I hated him. I was back to loving Spencer’s Winston because he was heart-breakingly realistic and angrily, shakily vulnerable. Like all of us.
Get yourself to the Nottingham Playhouse in September, if you can. If not, get yourself to any of the theatres around the world showing this play in the future. Brace yourself, drink your Victory Gin, and join the Party.
You can buy your tickets here.
