1984

St John’s Players chose to produce a most challenging and disturbing play – 1984 written by George Orwell and adapted by Robert Owens, Wilton E Hall Jr and William A Miles Jr.  Though written in 1948 it remains as prophetic as ever.   It tells the story of Winston Smith, an ordinary man living in a post-truth world where people, actions, language and even thoughts are controlled and, when necessary, deleted by the ruling party and their symbolic leader, Big Brother. Winston tries to rebel against the party and to create and record his inner life and a true record of his times.  There is of course the love story running  through this, with Winston and Julia, who think themselves safe and unseen whilst being watched all the time by Big Brother. In the end they both betray each other by simply speaking. Not an easy play to watch.

The setting was suitably austere and served dual purposes with the “tele-screen” and the eyes of Big Brother a constant presence. The set was quite ingenious. The black screens which were swivelled manually to create the various locations were in the main well handled by the cast and crew.  When longer scene changes were needed in act two, the tabs were brought in but having no covering music the audience had a tendency to chatter thus breaking any tension which may have  been built up.   Seated in the front row meant that everything and everyone was visible in the wings which was somewhat distracting.  Maybe bringing the tabs in slightly would have helped. 

Lighting was as usual well thought out adding to the atmosphere in most scenes. The single spot on Winston in Room 101 added to the tension.   The sound was excellent, well recorded and all cues were spot on.  Costumes were good with everyone in blue boiler suits, with the guard and O’Brien all in black. The only spot of colour being Julia’s dress and the Landlady’s costume which, though suitable, looked a bit too clean and smart.

Jon Bolderson as Winston Smith was first-rate. Here was the ordinary man carrying on with his life and questioning everything about him.  He leaps from love to fear, from anger to confusion and when he is confronted with his worst fear, the rats, in room 101 his terror appeared genuine.

An excellent performance came from Shannon Hogan-House as Julia who quietly takes Winston down the path of no return.  In the rented room scene the empathy between the two was believable.

Marek Szuba gave us a quietly spoken O’Brien, a member of the Inner Party who poses as a member of The Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, in order to deceive, trap, and capture Winston and Julia.  Szuba portrayed a seemingly caring figure that turns into a monster with no feelings of remorse. This could have been quite menacing but was maybe too quietly spoken at times making dialogue difficult to hear. Perhaps less standing side-on to the audience may have helped.

Good characterisation from actors who took on the other roles. Poppy Saunders was a confident Syme, Sara Halse as Parsons suffered slightly from first night nerves but gave a good account of herself, Olive Sparrow made the most of her dual roles as The Messenger and Gladys, Barbara Oxley gave a fine performance as The Landlady and Huw Davies remained stone-faced as Martin, the Guard.  The voices of The Announcer (Tom Bosner) and Goldstein (George Sigsworth) were recorded.

Director Kieron Toner chose his cast well and they all more than proved their worth providing us with a very thought provoking evening. 

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