The outstanding element of adaptor/director Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s skilful, playful filleting of George Orwell’s classic 1949 vision of dystopia is the atmosphere.
Right from the start, when a reading group discusses the novel and Winston Smith listens in silent astonishment, our nerves are on edge. A jangling, unsettling note of unease hovers over the eerily privacy-free proceedings and never leaves. Big Brother is, we suspect, watching and has been ever since this justifiably lauded show opened at the Nottingham Playhouse in 2013.
Icke, quite the man of the moment after his much-praised take on The Oresteia currently playing at the Almeida, and Macmillan give us, yes, 101 minutes of disquiet, notably aided by Tom Gibbons’s haunting sound design and Natasha Chivers’s unbearably intense between-scenes flashing lights. The Thought Police are everywhere, mingled among the glassy-eyed zealots who work alongside Winston (Matthew Spencer) at the Ministry of Truth.
A flexible eight-strong ensemble tackles all the roles with brio. Spencer is wonderfully disorientated as Winston, a lone voice of sanity in a Newspeak universe, and Janine Harouni makes her Julia a welcome burst of passion in a world where holding hands has been outlawed. This is a stylish summer hit.
Until Sept 5; 1984theplay.co.uk
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