“1984”, Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Summerhall – Old Lab
To 11 August 2024
(Times vary)
Duration: 60 minutes
Jeremy Malies in Edinburgh
10 August 2023
*** Three-star review
George Orwell wrote theatre reviews for Time and Tide and appreciated deft plot mechanics. He would admire the structure here which sees O’Brien order Winston and Julia to act out their physical crimes at the same time as he interrogates them. It’s a resourceful approach by London-based withintheatre who comprise actors from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.
It is their story to tell. At an event this summer on the island of Jura where Orwell wrote the novel, I looked at inscriptions in 1,984 different copies of the text across two dozen languages. The same sentiment kept appearing in copies contributed by readers in countries that previously formed the Soviet Bloc. “I didn’t just read this novel, I lived it.”
Orwell asked his literary agent Leonard Moore to ensure that no royalties were charged for translations into languages whose speakers were suffering under dictatorships. Young adults who have grown up under Viktor Yanukovych or Alexander Lukashenko own all this. I just wish withintheatre could have pulled it off with more technical flair and good judgement.
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” This greets us early on in the back-of-stage projection. And there is an abundance of video, both live and recorded, which is projected simultaneously on two screens. A line drawing of a human eye watches us constantly, but the graphic design comes nowhere near the right tone and has little threat in suggesting surveillance. Stronger are the numerous flickering but featureless female faces that conjure up the novel’s detail of “a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”
This version takes as a base the stage adaptation by former Methuen drama editor Nick Hern. I should have liked the company to have gone the whole hog and created something coherent throughout. Anybody who has read the novel (and it can be tough going) will remember that the plot is set in London. I found it jarring that Julia would explain in detail to Winston that he should take a train from Paddington to Marlow while at the same time we get economic details about Minsk.
Similarly, it’s odd that as the Winston who is being interrogated (another Winston is playing out the first meetings with Julia, their trysts and interview with O’Brien) Faiaz Valiullin should revert to his native Russian for the famed shriek of: “Do it to Julia!”
There are many positives. Recent Royal Central product Anastasia Aush is outstanding as Julia, notably when she recalls her grandfather being vaporized or reaches into her memory for the next line of “Oranges and Lemons”. You root for her and both Winstons (it is Igor Laskiy who performs the exposition for O’Brien – played by Ivan Ivashkin) when they think about breaking into a factory and working on the lines as proles. Laskiy is impressive and personable when showing his mastery of Newspeak subtleties. And Ivashkin has fearsome and witty put-downs for the latecomers. I certainly wouldn’t want to have to tell him what I consider to be the worst thing in the world!
In post-publication media interviews, Orwell was at pains to stress that the story is a warning not a prediction. He might have reconsidered this, with Belarus being a special case. The final moments of the play include an actor telling us that 1984 was banned from sale in Belarus in 2022.
Equally disturbing is a reminder of news headlines when, under the orders of Lukashenko, a Ryanair (of all carriers!) flight in May 2021 from Greece to Lithuania was rerouted to Minsk after Belarusian air traffic control passed on false details of a bomb threat. Passengers included the Belarus-born blogger and activist Roman Protasevich who was promptly imprisoned.
Warning not prediction perhaps, but some Soviet or former Soviet states have proved more predictable than others. The broad parallels here are pulled off astutely but the stagecraft (notably O’Brien’s gleeful use of a torture device which has not been earned by what has gone before as well as the mannered use of video) let the project down badly.
