1984: Adapted by Lyddiard: Northern Stage on tour Spring 2002

1984: George Orwell Adapted by Alan Lyddiard.
Northern Stage Ensemble on tour.

Runs 1hr 50 minutes. One interval

Review Mark Courtice 19th February

A 1984 for our times. With film, video, live action and specially composed music, Alan Lyddiard and the Northern Stage Ensemble want to create a 1984 for our times. They succeed. This adaptation concentrates on the perversion of language, passion, blood and, of course, the struggle of humans to survive when evil wants to control everything, even down to the banal. Refreshingly, like the original it is clear about what it is trying to say and then says it.

Huge screens wheel and turn to create locations, making humans seem tiny. Their pale blankness, however, makes each small figure show up with greater clarity (particularly when bodies and torturers’ aprons are covered in blood), and sometimes they clash, seemingly crushing people between them. Grilles remind us of Camp X-ray, especially when the screens form the room in which O’Brien holds his chillingly calm interrogations with Winston.

The film work is superb. Dance has always been miles ahead of theatre when it comes to the medium and V-Tol choreographer Mark Morris handles it with great sureness and skill. The set allows the images to be vast, omnipresent and sinister; there is a health warning to go with this, as some are horribly blood spattered. My only reservation is the (too specific) choice of Moscow as the location.

The music is loud and powerful, it chimes, thunders, rumbles and pulses, helping to make the piece feel really contemporary. Lighting and technical control is first class, and the marshalling of the set (by the whole company) is impressively fast and smooth.

Ensemble companies sometimes have to make do with actors in the wrong roles; this production avoids this because there are two excellent performances from Craig Conway and Jill Halfpenny as Winston and Julia, who invest their love and revolt with real feeling and pathos. Halfpenny particularly has real energy as well as toughness and tenderness in just the right measure. Having said that, the ensemble ethos means that all should take credit for the acting facing up to all that technology - and winning.

Winston Craig Conway
Julia: Jill Halfpenny
O’Brien: Mark Calvert
Charrington: Steven Hawksby
Syme/Martin: Patrick Hoffmann
Proles/Outer: Party Members: Mick Storrie
Andrew Stephenson
Simon Henderson

Directors: Alan Lyddiard and Mark Murphy
Design:Neil Murray
Film: Mark Murphy
Music: John Alder
Lighting: Jon Linstrum
Sound: Martin Hodgson

Tour: 19-23 March Charter Theatre Preston, 26-30 March Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Anthony Hopkins Theatre).

2002-02-22 19:04:07