1984 by GEORGE ORWELL

adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E Hall Jr
and William A Miles Jr

Performed by Lancaster University Theatre Group
by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing Co
The Sugar House, Sugar House Alley, Lancaster
Monday 6 to Wednesday 8 June 2005

This review is dedicated to the George Fox Six

"Nineteen Eighty-Four takes LUTG in a new artistic direction",
- Director Phil Reid.

George Orwell's 1949 classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, formed the second of the last three offerings of the current academic year from Lancaster University Theatre Group (LUTG). Although not intended by LUTG as a political statement, and was planned months ago, it struck me that, given the current debate about the so-called George Fox Six, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Why? Well, remember the story: it's about cruel repression, a nightmare world where lies and spin are seen as truth; the needs of the political and establishment machines come first, (he's called Blair, remember?) and integrity, truth, beauty and sheer basic human dignity all go out of the window in a miasma of wanton brutality and horror.

Oh, and 1984 is about ordinary people who see a future beyond imposed orthodoxy; they love, think for themselves, and respect the truth. They recall what integrity means because, like God, there is no word for it any more in doublespeak.

"Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it,' says Dr Faustus in Marlowe's play of that name, which was written in the early days of the terror-fuelled, witch-hunting reign of the ineffectual and thuggish James I. And so might have said Orwell's hero, the confused, ordinary Winston Smith, as he falls – innocently, or naïvely? - deeper and deeper into the morass of evil that is Ingsoc and Oceania.

This production, wonderfully directed by Phil Reid and Frankie Valium and produced by Tom Bohan and Sophie Nichols, is based on their vision of a hell that makes Hieronymous Bosch look like a village fête.

There could not have been a more appropriate setting than the bleak, former-factory-lookalike, airport-hangar edifice of the former Georgian capitalist warehouse and now student nightclub, which has less architectural charm than even Lancaster Police Station. As the action and terror was played out, it certainly felt more sinister and intimidating than any other theatre space I know hereabouts.

Brutal, in your face, into your eyeballs and all round you, the sheer terror evoked by this production seeped into the marrow and charged the brain to a degree that only first-rate, live theatre can. Even the usual preliminary request to silence mobile phones etc was delivered by a menacing, black-clad, balaclava-ed and armed thug who ended his message icily and laconically, "Or you'll be shot'.

The acting was flawlessly impassioned, and embraced gravitas and tenderness, the banal futility of office life, officially-sanctioned guerrilla warfare, and torture – mental and physical. The dramatic impetus was enhanced with some excellently-shot video footage, which partly served to fill in the action and, oddly yet effectively, added to the bleak realismo of dramatic narrative. The familiar Bailrigg Underpass has never looked more threatening, nor Alexandra Square like 1970s Belfast or 1990s Beirut.

Casting also demonstrated that this play was a timely choice, as several of the cast will graduate and depart at the end of this term. Looking at the LUTG veterans, Winston Smith was humanely and intimately played with gravitas and exemplary diction by Laurence Brown (who directed the stunning Amadeus last term - see review), and Party panjandrum O'Brien allowed the redoubtable Chris Slater (see reviews of Romeo, Antigone and Frankenstein) to demonstrate the smooth, sleek, mephitic evil we see in parliaments and presidential palaces across the globe, throughout the centuries. And in university offices in our noe-Blairite time too.

The performances of the two leading women well matched the male leads. Ruth Gregson was equally terrifying yet somehow sympathetic as Winston's colleague Parsons, and relative LUTG-newcomer Mel Rashbrooke's portrayal of Winston's forbidden love and hope-for-life, Julia, was finely controlled, racked though she was between magical tenderness of her love and integrity, and the brutality and sheer squalor of the régime.

As well as the other fine performances in the other roles, the production team and crew deserve high praise for their contributions to the overwhelming atmosphere of evil and horror. The video work, in particular, was highly professional in both design and execution.

We went on the last night which, I am delighted to note, played to a full house. I came away harrowed – a feeling I have rarely experienced in the theatre. Only world-class performances of plays like Middleton's Changeling (at Harrogate Theatre), Sherman's Bent (London) and Brecht's Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Leeds) made me feel that I had physically made an offering at the holy shrine of evil. LUTG's 1984 was of this calibre.

Maybe it's the fine performances that sometimes make one feel like that, maybe the play itself, or the subject-matter of the text. With this production, it was all three. But in this case, I was also painfully aware, on this occasion, that 1984 was being played – by students, at Lancaster University - at just the same time as six of these students' peers were being hauled through the courts on politically-motivated charges at the behest of the faceless bureaucrats and the global capitalists.

And that was the most terrifying thing of all.

This review is dedicated to the George Fox Six

11 June 2005
Michael Nunn

Editor's note:
Michael has waived his usual claim to copyright on this review. Anyone using it is asked to acknowledge
www.virtual-lancaster.net.
Michael is anxious that whoever wants to quote it, in full or in part, in support of those who value truth, intergrity and freedom, should feel free to do so.
Particularly anyone and everyone involved with the George Fox Six.