1984 review, Almeida

Some entertainments are quite compelling while you're watching them, and forgotten the instant you leave the auditorium. So it is with this original and occasionally alarming dramatisation of George Orwell's seminal novel, 1984. After a slow first half, the second is wonderfully horrible, but it's all happening 'over there'. There's nothing to draw the audience in.

Many of us read 1984 at school - an eerie and too-possible what-if, where the worst lies and fantasies of political ideology are used to create a dystopian world where nothing is what it seems. Those who haven't read it will recognise the phrases and vocabulary spawned in its pages: Big Brother is watching you, doublethink, double-talk, Room 101. Channel 5's Big Brother house is an exemplar of the principle: everyone under scrutiny so they turn on each other and report every transgression. In Oceania, where the original Big Brother rules, the political production team not only monitors you, it wipes you from the records if you err.

As our hero, Winston Smith, starts to unpick the daily diet of disinformation and doublethink and challenges the might of Big Brother, he finds himself in an all white room, Room 101, where his loyalty to his dissident girlfriend is tested when a cage of hungry rats is fitted to his face. The premise in 1984 is deeply unsettling and a favourite across all cultural forms. It can also be identified in a number of modern political systems from Stalin to South American juntas, from Syria to Salafists introducing Sharia law. Lies, lies and damned lies used to subjugate whole populations who play the game to stay alive. Given that 1984 is ever redolent with resonances, Robert Icke and Duncan Macmilan's production is strangely old fashioned.

In conclusion: The device for scrutinising the story - a reading group from the future - leeches dramatic tension from what is a visually atmospheric and well crafted, multimedia, production.  The set is excellent, the performances understated. The end sends a shiver down the spine. It just doesn't extend its reach to the heart.

References
1984, Almeida Theatre, Tickets

Almeida Theatre, Almeida Street, London N1 1TA.