1984 at the Hudson
Theatre.
L-R: Tom Sturridge, Reed Birney, and Olivia Wilde in 1984.
It is a
curious fact that to reveal what makes the new play 1984, based on the eponymous novel, so good probably qualifies as a
spoiler. Given that the production is
banking on the renewed popularity of its immortal source text in the wake of an
administration that practices many of the tactics discussed in the book, but
with less dexterity, one might assume that the audience knows exactly what’s
going to happen in this British transfer as soon as they walk into the theater.
Suffice it to say that most of the
things that seem bad about the play (by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan, also
the directors) turn out to be precisely what is good about it. The beginning of the show, which opens June
22nd at the Hudson Theatre, is constrained, confused, and simplistic,
and then, suddenly, it isn’t – and the reveal is one of the most satisfying,
and revolutionary, feats of stagecraft we are likely to see on a Broadway stage
any time soon.
It would be more
edifying, then, perhaps, to discuss what isn’t
in the play – mostly exposition, as the piece requires, perhaps
inevitably, a thorough recollection of the novel. 1984
the play isn’t so much 1984 the novel
as a dream of that novel, ethereal and hard to grasp, a shell-shocked haze of a
memory of an atrocity. Big Brother’s
face, the defining icon of the book and the Michael Radford film (released in
the real 1984), appears not once in the play.
The supposed terrorist Emmanuel Goldstein makes only a momentary
appearance on the broad corkboard screen that serves as a platform for the
show’s plentiful projections (by Tim Reid, with scenic design by Chloe
Lamford). The novel had a broad
supporting cast of alternately trembling and loyal members of the ruling
Party. Most of them make the jump to the
play, but they are mostly drowned out by a central trio we can’t take our eyes
off.
Tom
Sturridge, the fabled replacement for Shia Lebeouf in 2013’s Orphans, plays the lead, disillusioned
Party stooge Winston Smith, as something close to a drooling meth-head, which
is a completely legitimate dramatic choice that starts off deeply annoying and
ends up connecting on a terrific scale. Olivia
Wilde, as his secret paramour Julia, is more human if also marginally less
interesting than Suzanna Hamilton in the film, but she always makes more of a
visual impression than anything else, and her slinky, pale Wednesday Addams of
a character seems to have snuck into this production from another show, mostly
to the good. Most important is Reed
Birney, late of The Humans and Man From Nebraska, whose O’Brien, a
master manipulator and unsettlingly sympathetic philosopher, is so quiet, so
unassuming, that in his long, bravura scene in the second half of the play, he
walks away with a show so technically brilliant that carrying it must do a
number on his back.
The play
achieves, mainly by dint of that aforementioned sequence, what the Radford film
really never did – it’s terrifying.
Radford warned, before the nationwide art-house screening of 1984 in April, that the film would be
hard to watch, but with its glorious Roger Deakins cinematography,
gray-and-green fantasias, and a surprisingly calming Richard Burton, it’s
actually cinematically pleasant, if not quite reassuring. Not so the play. Its sequences of torture (which occupy much
of the final half-hour) are so brutal I was momentarily convinced I would have
to leave the theater; I am, funnily enough, in a state of doublethink about
recommending the play – it is remarkably good in nearly every way but hardly
the thing you’d wish on your grandmother.
The close
of the play (it has one 101-minute act), the payoff of an incalculably stupid
dramatic framing device that I had foolishly hoped had been abandoned earlier
in the runtime, is disappointing if only because, after that Birney-dominated torture sequence, it fails to land exactly as hard as it should. In their entirely earned confidence in their
sense of the theatrical, Icke and MacMillan lean a bit too far into the
meta-theatrical (Winston shouts to the audience, while being tortured, “Help
me! Why doesn’t anybody do anything?”). Luckily
even that final sequence is as visually well-designed as anything on the stage
this last season – only after seeing this show will you understand how one can
tremble at the sight of a pink umbrella.
The show ends with O’Brien’s hand
on Winston’s shoulder, as Winston, battered, broken, and beyond reason, mutters
his gratitude for being laid low at Big Brother’s feet. If you see 1984, your reaction will not be gratitude, exactly, nor disgust,
exactly, nor, certainly, will you have wasted an evening. But if you know quite what to feel after
being injected with this production in its white-hot, furious purity, you’ve
got one on me.
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