Yeah, that's a lot of producers. It takes a bunch to get a play doing multi-city touring nowadays. Anyway, yes, this is the much-hyped Orwell adaptation, Unfortunately, this doesn't quite cut it for me. Robert Icke and Duncan McMillan's adaptation succeeds more on the visual scale than it does on the verbal or ideas scale. Winston Smith seems less like an everyman rebel than a gullible fool who takes the first opportunity for revolution that is offered to him, and the relationship between him and Julia seems more like something that exists is in the book than something that any kind of sane woman would ever be involved in. It's obvious from the first second that whatever revolution Julia wants to have, Winston doesn't understand it and is utterly bamboozled by the simplest of tricks. While there's still a certain power to the torture that follows, it's pretty diminished by being practiced on a virtual non-character.
Ironically for a play about the human impulse struggling with crushing systems, this doesn't show a lot of humanity. I can't say for certain it's a case of this production having been toured too long, or whether it's because it's a replication of a production that worked overseas, or whether it's simply something where what's here doesn't resonate with me. But while there are impressive visuals and moments, it isn't something that hangs together or sticks with me beyond the occasional image, and while the grand set transformation is technically impressive, it's not enough to make me think this is anything that engaged me very much.
No comments:
Post a Comment