“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”

So goes the immortal quote from George Orwell’s 1984. Alongside an arsenal of references that have seeped into our modern political vernacular – “Big Brother”, “thought-crime”, “Room 101” to name a few – we are treated to a vision so uniquely dystopian that commentators were forced to use the author’s surname to describe it. This adaptation, adapted by Ryan Craig and directed by Lindsay Posner, marks the 75th anniversary of Orwell’s seminal novel and delivers a dynamic and potent take on this morbid, modern parable.

As we took our seats at the Theatre Royal Brighton, we were at once immersed within this Orwellian future. The action spills from the stage from the moment the audience enters the auditorium with the sweeping eye of Big Brother flitting from the stalls to the Royal Circle, from the boxes to the gods. No one is safe – we are, from the get-go, immersed, involved and complicit.

This production, to draw further parallels with our modern age of observation and surveillance, leans heavily into the novel’s depiction of technology as agent of the regime. The show seamlessly blends live action with pre-recorded material to delicious effect. Cameras, hung amidst the lighting rig, catch angles otherwise invisible to us, zooming in and broadcasting hidden, intimate moments. Members of the supporting cast sit in open wings, their faces conspicuous to the audience as they watch the action play out, it is us who watches the watchers. The politics and platitudes bleed from page, to stage, to our own age, everything awash with motif and rhetoric. If at times it seems contrite that is only because it was first. Craig’s sumptuous script packs the intrigue and humanity of the novel into a neat two hour telling.

For all the tech incorporated within it’s delivery, 1984 never loses its human heart. The performances of the production’s leading quartet – honed and inspirited like rats in a bucket by Posner’s direction – energise and expertly convey a tale that could prove sermon-like in the wrong hands. Mark Quartley, as Winston, throws himself into the protagonist’s journey from disaffected worker to radical revolutionary (and the resulting consequences.) His performance fizzes and sputters with frenetic energy that is met in kind by both Eleanor Wyld and David Birrell, playing Julia and Parsons respectively. Wyld is a riotous ball of humanity and sentiment that beats at the bars of the cage whilst Birrell’s Parsons is at once the bumbling neighbour and would-be informant. Ever the party loyalist he ties himself in knots to justify allegiance to contradictory and ever-changing diktats. The tour billed itself on the casting of Keith Allen as O’Brien and rightly so. He is a joy to watch, Machiavellian without ever straying into caricature, a blistering two-hander between himself and Quartley in the second act proves the evening’s highlight.

“Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” Even 75 years on, we continue to frame our present with past speculation on an, as yet, unrealised future. In a world of gunboats, red pills and deep fakes, at a time where the powerful readily dehumanise and radicalise this material feels eerily pertinent. It remains a cautionary tale for now but we stray and we teeter and this production defiantly reminds us of such. We must not look away. As audience, as citizens, all we can do is watch… And be watched.

Theatre Royal Brighton, Wednesday 30th October 2024
For tickets and further information click here
Photo by Simon Annand