“1984”, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Mark Brown on Clydeside
★★★★☆
10 September 2026
The pairing of Chris Hannan as adapter and Dominic Hill as director is a long and successful one. To take two examples, their collaborations on the Dumas adaptation The Three Musketeers and the Princess of Spain (for English Touring Theatre, Belgrade Theatre, Coventry and the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh in 2010) and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (co-produced by the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, Liverpool Playhouse and the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh in 2013) remain seared into a collective memory.
So, too, I suspect, will this new stage version of George Orwell’s novel 1984. In these days – when “Hate Week” seems to be every week for the masked-up, black-clad boot boys from Belfast to Glasgow, Dover and Portsmouth, and despotism sits in elected offices from Washington to Rome, Buenos Aires and New Delhi – it is often joked, bleakly, that there are people who are currently treating Orwell’s book, not as a warning, but as an instruction manual.
There is no question that Hill’s production – which boasts powerfully atmospheric sets, lighting, video projections, sound and music – seems frighteningly pertinent. Jack Tarlton (as Orwell’s defiant chief protagonist, Winston Smith) and Jessica Hardwick (Winston’s clear-eyed lover, Julia) give compelling performances in the midst of a first class cast that includes Irene Macdougall (the regime’s snake-like double dealer O’Brien) and Pete Collins (the snivelling, compliant Parsons).
The scene in which a masked state goon walks into a lecture on the regime’s brain-numbing Newspeak, given by the ill-fated Syme (the never less than superb Robert Jack), is truly chilling. The point when Winston and Julia find a moment of seeming bucolic freedom provides a startling and sobering contrast.
Orwell’s hideous conclusion is no less distressing for being so inevitable and so famous. However, there is a departure from – or, rather, an audacious addition to – the novelist’s narrative in the shape of a three-part mini-drama of Hannan’s devising.
The dramatist has written an interesting and illuminating short play based on the period in which Orwell (also played by Tarlton) was an in-patient, receiving treatment for tuberculosis, at Hairmyres Hospital in South Lanarkshire. In this mini-drama, Orwell (who, famously, fought – as part of the independent socialist forces – during the Spanish Civil War) encounters consultant pulmonologist Mr Dick (a fascist who served with Franco’s militia, and is played by Jack).
Good and worthwhile though this piece is, Hannan and Hill make a significant mistake in splitting it into three parts, one at the beginning of each half, and the third at the end. Hannan’s new script functions quite well in its introductory capacities (connecting, as it does, to Orwell’s motivations for writing 1984).
However, the decision to give the play, in effect, two endings – the unforgettable conclusion to Orwell’s novel, followed by the departure of Orwell from Hairmyres – seems to me a serious misjudgement. The culmination of 1984 is unusually powerful and, good though Hannan’s supplementary playlet is, it is impossible for his new ending to be anything other than anti-climactic.
This structural error is a real disappointment, given that, otherwise, this production is a truly excellent adaptation of one of the great novels of modern times.
At the Citizens until 26 September, then touring until 7 November: citz.co.uk
