YEAR OF THE RAT. To 5 April.
Leeds.
YEAR OF THE RAT
by Roy Smiles.
West Yorkshire Playhouse (Courtyard Theatre) To 5 April 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu 2pm & Sat 2.30pm.
Audio-described 29 March 2.30pm, 3 April 7.45pm.
Captioned 2 April.
Runs 2hr One interval.
TICKETS: 0113 213 7700.
www.wyp.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 20 March.
Bleak view of a writer with a bleak vision.
George Orwell’s life wasn’t much of a laugh. He’d seen Burma as a policeman, Spain as an unofficial soldier, plus Paris, London and the road to Wigan Pier from the perspective of the impoverished. Finally, his health failing in his, and the 20th-century’s forties, he’s shown in Roy Smiles’ new play seeking love in a cold climate as he takes himself and the manuscript of his final, gloomiest novel 1984 to Jura, off the Scottish coast.
Designer Michael Pavelka shows it as a place of cold grey, heavy clouds scudding overhead, the slate landscape hugging the cottage where the fire is stoked to keep cold at bay. Jason Taylor’s lighting is forever at half-mast, as it were. Darkness is always present, as it is in Orwell’s mind. While he writes about a totalitarian future where humanity has no escape, creatures from his last book Animal Farm invade his rented space.
Animal Farm’s heroic victim, the workhorse Boxer, is now a creature without hope, as Orwell’s spirit sinks. The new novel’s Room 101 Rat crystallises hopelessness in sleek Fascist uniform, with accompanying assured smirk, while a Stalin-Pig from Animal Farm descends to a burst of ironically triumphalist Shostakovich, putting the writer in his place.
Though Smiles cuts away companions who were around on Jura, he balances Orwell’s inner demons with imaginary visits from the self-interested Cyril Connolly, epicene writer, editor and centre of metropolitan literary attention, who had the seeming success and sexual fulfilment that the tall, thin, gloomy Orwell could not find.
Most importantly, there’s Sonia Brownell, cultured siren of the time who doesn’t enjoy her brief sexual liaison with the man whose mind is on 1984, yet who desires her desperately. Claudia Elmhirst’s youthful brightness and direct sense contrast the sophisticated scepticism Nicholas Blane brings to his imperturbable character with a smiling exterior and an answer for anything.
Between them, and the animals, Hugo Speer’s Orwell is a dour, troubled creature. Both Smiles and director Alan Strachan allow the central point to arise naturally; that love and happiness are often incompatible with the determined pursuit of a bleak vision.
George Orwell: Hugo Speer.
Sonia Brownell: Claudia Elmhirst.
Boxer/Pig/Rat: Paul Kemp.
Cyril Connolly: Nicholas Blane.
Director: Alan Strachan.
Designer: Michael Pavelka.
Lighting: Jason Taylor.
Sound/Video: Mic Ford.
Movement: Lucy Hind.
Assistant director: Kathryn Ind.
2008-03-29 01:49:24