Early this year, sales of George Orwell's novel "1984" spiked after the words "alternative facts" entered the lexicon. And soon after, it was announced that a celebrated stage version in the U.K. would come to the U.S. It opened on Broadway on Thursday night. NY1's Roma Torre filed the following review.
It is truly frightening to see the parallels between George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" and the state of our union today.
Orwell wrote of "doublethink" and "Newspeak." We have alternate facts and fake news.
Of course, we're not ruled by an authoritarian Big Brother figure — at least not yet — but Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan's harrowing stage adaptation leaves little doubt we are being watched.
This is not an easy play for us to watch. Icke and Macmillan, who also co-directed, employ disorienting effects: light and sound disruptions mess with our heads, the story seems to jump back and forth in non-linear fashion, and the torture sequence at the end is brutally graphic.
Orwell's disturbing tale, written nearly 70 years ago, envisioned a future without history or objective truth. The only facts that exist are the ones determined by Big Brother and the party. And so the mantra becomes "Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Freedom is slavery."
Attempting to resist is Winston, a young functionary who falls in love with Julia. Together, meeting in a secret room without a watchful tele-screen, they plan their rebellion. Of course, Big Brother is watching and they are captured. What follows is the stuff of nightmares, and this is not for the faint of heart.
There is a very unsettling quality to the performances, and deliberately so. Tom Sturridge's Winston and Olivia Wilde as Julia are clearly in love, but outwardly their emotions are muted. They are products of a world without basic humanity.
Sturridge plays Winston as something of an everyman, channeling the desperation we all feel when liberty is curtailed. Wilde, making her Broadway debut, is equally compelling. And the always superlative Reed Birney is terrifyingly impassive as the torturer O'Brien.
Perhaps most terrifying of all is hearing O'Brien seeming to predict our current state of apathy, saying, "The people will not revolt. They will not look up from their screens long enough to notice what's happening." In 2017, "1984" resonates louder than ever.