Is It 1984 Yet?

"Who controls the past controls the future.
Who controls the present controls the past."
Big Brother is Watching You.

I saw a small theatre company's adaptation of George Orwell's famous novel tonight and the experience has caused many thoughts to swirl in my mind. The thought police would have a field day with me! In the first place, the play itself. It was all right. I find it fascinating to attend independent theatre because of its no-frills nature. This makes the performance less-thrilling but more focused on the actors. This presentation was no exception. There was no stage, art direction was bare, and seating was improvised.

The adaptation was original and you could see that in the effort of the players. They really wanted the experience to work. But the script fell short in achieving the critical subtext that makes the novel so intriguing. The play moved through static plot points but never achieved a cohesiveness of theme. One of the films greatest strengths was the use of video to create the INGSOC news bulletins and to model the ever-watching telescreen. This tool was effective and communicated most of the important information from the novel. It was clear that the presentation was made for fans of the book but not as an artistic interpretation in its own right. If you've never read 1984 then you would not leave the play with an understanding of its commentary. You would, however, get a good grasp of the major activities of the story.

So leaving the play I pondered this idea. There appears to be a return to political commentary in popular culture. And as I perused the internet to find an image for this post I encountered many political cartoons and pictures that connected the current US administration with Orwell's Big Brother. But then I also found a multitude of images from that other Big Brother - the shameless reality TV one - and realized that entire generation probably doesn't know why that show is called what it is. And if this is the case, then there are more people who haven't read the novel (or its brethren - the works of Huxley and Vonnegut for example) and I feel that the scary prophecies of the 1940s are moving closer to reality.

There is much to say about the book but it is not one of my favourites. I took me three tries before I could get into it enough to get all the way through the story. But it has stayed with me. And I found that during the play I would nod at the touches, the comments, the references as the story came flooding back to me. The performance was not as riveting a I had hoped. I also felt that it missed the opportunity to present the overall feeling of the book. But I will also concede that the adaptation is a challenge and I am just thankful that such obstacles are tackled in the arts scene here.