| This is not your father's George Orwell.
Rather, the staged adaptation of Orwell's novel ''1984" at the Actors' Gang bears the stamp of its adapter, Michael Gene Sullivan, and certainly of its director, Actors' Gang leader Tim Robbins. As is the case with the majority of productions that come out of the Gang - now thriving in a new venue, Culver City's Ivy Substation - this means difficult, topical and insightful material that sacrifices none of its theatricality to make a point.
THEATER REVIEW: "1984"
Where: The Actors' Gang, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City
When: 8 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; through April 8
Cost: $20 to $25
Information: (310) 838-4264, www.theactorsgang.com
Several points, really, and much fodder for post-play rethinking.
A man named Winston, who seeks to break free of the too-watchful gaze of Big Brother and the Thought Police, is captured and tortured, prodded to admitting his rebellious thoughts. The interrogation room designed by Richard Hoover and Sibyl Wickersheimer is a three-sided, slate-gray space suggestive of a converted locker room. A face peeks out periodically via a few strategically located TV screens.
Winston (played by Brent Hinkley) is apparently a rebel of no small importance. Or perhaps the chains and shock treatment represent the manner in which all residents of Oceania who would challenge Big Brother are to be treated. Regardless, Winston's history, the chronology leading up to his capture and his ultimate fate are compellingly rendered.
And with great thrift. Besides Hinkley and Keythe Farley (as underground rebel leader O'Brien), Robbins employs just four other actors in multiple roles as the various party members who are beating Winston down or enacting the people he meets in flashback.
Kaili Hollister shines as Julia, the worker who seeks subversion via sex and love, but who may also prove to be a spy. There's a strong connection between Hollister and Hinkley as well as between Hollister and Brian T. Finney, who occasionally steps in as Winston in memory scenes. Robbins brings an assured tenderness and real heat to the love interludes.
They're a smooth counterpoint to the angry, more urgent goings-on. Oceania, it will be remembered, is at war, although whether with Eurasia or East Asia appears to be entirely at the changeable whim of Big Brother and the Thought Police. ''1984," a critique of totalitarian oppression written in 1948, may play more vividly in adapted form than it currently reads as a novel. Robbins is reportedly working on a new film version (and we haven't had one of those since Michael Radford's film in, yep, '84). If his Actors' Gang version is any indication, Robbins might prove to be just the man for the cinematic assignment. | 
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