HIGH-TECH BIG BROTHER
George Orwell’s classic literary warning about a global totalitarian takeover has had only one noteworthy big-screen adaptation, released — when else? — in 1984 and starring John Hurt and Richard Burton. Intriguingly, Duncan Macmillan and Robert Icke’s stage version, translated into French by Guillaume Corbeil, puts much of the story on the big screen, too. Giant projected images evoke the soul-crushing Party propaganda and loom over the actors, making them seem diminished and vulnerable.
Mostly, though, the screen is used to record the onstage action, as though the play itself were under constant surveillance. Leading the eight-strong cast, Maxim Gaudette and Alexis Martin give suitably dour and intense performances as, respectively, Party functionary-turned-refusenik Winston Smith and friend-orfoe O’Brien. But special mention should also go to cameraman Éliot Laprise, who deftly waltzes around the actors to create some wonderfully creepy cinematic images.
Much of the novel’s language has become common currency — Big Brother, doublethink, Thought Police, etc. So familiar are these terms, in fact, that it’s easy to forget how gripping and diamond-sharp Orwell’s storytelling really is.
Macmillan and Icke’s adaptation takes the risk of muddying that narrative effect by filtering it through Winston’s disorientated memory. There’s the suggestion that it all takes place in his mind while he’s undergoing re-education in Room 101, that laboratory of prisoners’ worst imaginings.
Or perhaps Winston is projecting into the future: The show begins with a cheery seminar given many years after 1984 and based on The Principles of Newspeak, the appendix Orwell wrote for the novel. Much to Winston’s confusion, scenes repeat themselves and the children’s ditty Oranges and Lemons spookily recurs.
Despite the potential muddle of such mashing up, this coproduction between Théâtre Denise-Pelletier and Théâtre du Trident, under Édith Patenaude’s direction, retains the page-turning lucidity of Orwell’s blend of spy thriller, sci-fi fantasy and love story, as well as its intellectual toughness.
Above all, it’s a spectacular feast of multimedia effects that should keep even the most fidgety literature student gripped. (In addition to evening performances, it’s getting regular daytime showings for schools and colleges.) If it occasionally lapses into Tronlike visuals and some overdone electro muzak here and there, well, that’s the ’80s for you.
There’s more than a touch of doublethink going on in Éric Assous’s hit Parisian comedy Nos femmes, which has been given a gritty Québécois spin in Monique Duceppe’s adaptation.
It involves a poker night gone disastrously wrong after one of three middle-aged pals lurches in late to announce he has just killed his wife. There follows 90 minutes of mental gymnastics, and even rationalizing of the horrid deed over pizzas, as Paul (Guy Jodoin) and Max (Sylvain Marcel) wonder whether to denounce Simon (David Savard) to the police or provide him with an alibi.
Like Yasmina Reza’s Art, it uses what appears to be a moment of madness to explore the limits of male friendship, as well as the guys’ relationships with their offstage womenfolk.
The three-man cast clearly has fun with the characters’ contradictions. Jodoin’s Paul is a mildmannered doctor simmering with inner rage. Marcel’s Max is a burly, no-nonsense man’s man fixated, like The Odd Couple’s Felix, on finicky domestic details. Savard’s wife-murdering coiffure Simon is a would-be super-stud with the physical gaucheness of Mr. Bean.
The play’s grim premise circles uncomfortably around a sinkhole of appallingly poor taste. The recent film version starring Daniel Auteuil, in fact, hit a ham-fisted note of broad comedy that not only left one aghast at its flippancy over violence against women, but managed to be excruciatingly unfunny.
Thankfully, Michel Poirier’s production for Théâtre Duceppe gives due diligence to the play’s moral seriousness while mining plenty of laughs from its sparkling one-liners.
This play retains the page-turning lucidity of Orwell’s blend of spy thriller, sci-fi fantasy and love story