Past as prologue
‘1984’ on stage: tech flaws, but on target for 2017.
The election of Donald Trump to the nation’s highest office has been very good for sales of red “Make America GreatAgain” baseball caps, endless outraged Twitter threads and vital investigative journalism.
It also has led to a surge in the popularity of George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
After presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway coined the phrase “alternative facts” in January, Orwell’s chilling 1949work about a totalitarian society hitNo. 1 on theAmazon bestseller list; today, it’s No. 2 on the Amazon classics list, right behind Orwell’s “Animal Farm.”
ABritish stage version by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan is running on Broadway. StarringTom Sturridge and OliviaWilde, the production’s graphic torture scenes have reportedly left more than a few audience members horrified or nauseated.
Adifferent adaptation has just opened in South Florida as the first production by Outre Theatre in its new home at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center. The 2004 script by Andrew White of Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre compresses Orwell’s story in a way that isn’t always easy to follow.
Yet so much of the piece — the “doublethink” gobbledygook that passes for truth, omnipresent video screens keeping everyone under surveillance, a world perpetually atwar, the routine rewriting of history— is close enough to our current reality that most people will feel the play’s resonance. Orwellwas prescient, all right, just a few decades off.
The story, you may recall, centers onWinston Smith (SethTrucks), amember of the middle class Outer Party in the post-war superstate of Oceania. He lives a life of gray routine, rewriting history at the ironically named Ministry ofTruth, wearily getting up for compulsory morning exercises led by a drill sergeant of a woman whowatches him fromthe mandatory telescreen in his flat, popping out for shots of “Victory Gin” invariably accompanied by a toast to Oceania’s possibly apocryphal but omnipresent leader Big Brother. (Yes, reality TV’s “Big Brother,” where participants arewatched and filmed 24/7, took its name fromOrwell’s novel.)
Winston’s life changes when his coworker Julia (JennipherMurphy), who maintains the ministry’s novel-writing machines and is a fiery member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, slips him a three-word note: “I love you.” The two begin a forbidden, reckless affair and are soon drawn into the counter revolutionary world of a group called the Brotherhood. Soon enough, “friends” become enemies, gruesome torture follows and betrayal destroys any illusions of freedom or self-determination.
Presenting “1984” amid the current Zeitgeist is a smartmove. But Outre production is tech-intensive, with frequent use of videos, projections and intense sound effects.
It’s logical and appropriate to make use of large-scale video imagery in a piece involving perpetual surveillance, but Outre’s openingwas marred by multiple glitches, including sound thatwas silent or at times turned so lowthat words became unintelligible. Although the latter may have been deliberate, it isn’t effective.
Though the prosceniumis surrounded by colorful propaganda posters with such Orwellian “doublethink” phrases as“War Is Peace” and “Freedom Is Slavery,” DougWetzel’s spare set consists of a series of platforms, with location changes accomplished by projections and the addition/subtraction of minimal furniture pieces.
Outré’s “1984” doesn’t quite coalesce, nor does it retain its dramatic grip on the audience throughout. Even so, in a world full ofTrump Tweets, Kim Jong-un threats, “fake” news and devices that track every little thing about us, the play is likely to seem disturbingly familiar.
“1984” runs through July 30 at the Pompano Beach Cultural Center, 50W. Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Beach. Show times are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets $39 ($19 students and industry). 954-545-7800 or ccpompano.org