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Heading into the Actors' Gang's staging of George Orwell's Big Brother novel, 1984, (which opened Saturday at the Ivy Substation in Venice), and knowing it was directed by actor/activist Tim Robbins, I worried that the approach would turn Orwell's horrific vision of state control into a current-events diatribe.
I imagined the novel's hapless victim, Winston Smith, undergoing unrelenting torture as photos from Abu Ghraib Prison flashed on the walls and the face of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld stood in for Big Brother. I could see a copy of the Patriot Act being held up as an example of Double Think American style, with eavesdropping Security Administration wiretappers taking the place of Orwell's Thought Police.
It turned out my fears were unwarranted. Yes, the adaptation by Michael Gene Sullivan, the design of the costumes by Allison Leach and the stark interrogation-room set by Richard Hoover and Sibyl Wickersheimer give the play a contemporary look and sound. But the hard truth is that Orwell's grim vision speaks resonantly to today's world without the need to change a thing. And to his credit, Robbins tells the story on stage in a way that allows the audience to make present-day connections for themselves. In its original form, Orwell's plot unfolds as a linear succession of events, during which the central character finds love, is driven toward an act of rebellion, is arrested and is mercilessly interrogated.
The play uses the interrogation as its focus, during which Winston (Brent Hinckley) is tortured into recounting the details of his past that appear as flashbacks. The ultimate goal of his interrogators, however, is not to determine his guilt (they already know that), but to totally break his spirit and ability to resist.
1984 was not a fun book to read. It is not a fun play to watch. In fact, it is a harrowing experience, made worse by the knowledge that similar interrogations have been carried out by our own government, in secret, as part of the ongoing war on terror. Orwell saw it coming with uncanny accuracy.
It is terrifying to watch Hinckley tortured into his admissions of guilt. He tries to resist. But every time he does, his body is subjected to ripping jolts of electric shock. His interrogators are the anonymous men in gray suits. And as they work on Winston directly, the process is overseen from afar by the chief interrogator, O'Brien (Keythe Farley). Cool, detached and totally in control, he views the action by monitor, poses questions and issues instructions.
The play calls for several of the actors to play multiple roles. One moment Brian Finney, V.J. Foster and Steven Porter are Winston' jailers. The next they are characters out of his past. Some come across as real. Others are humorously grotesque like something out of a nightmare.
Kaili Hollister, the only woman in the cast, plays several roles, including the part of Julia, the woman who befriends Winston and becomes his lover, co-conspirator and co-prisoner.
In 1949, Orwell predicted a sinister new world order dominated by mind control through mass media, mass fear, and mass indoctrination. Sad as it is to say, he would find himself right at home and sick at heart in 2006. Ultimately, that is the point of this production.
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