“I’m asking where you are. Right now. Where do you think you are?”
This question echoes though Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan’s new adaptation of 1984,challenging characters and audiences alike.
Regulars of Benchmark Theatre are put wrong-footed from the start, as the usually cheerful and cozy lobby has been transformed into a slightly melodramatic, but nevertheless effective passage to the theater itself. You get no ticket, you get no program – you get a small, stamped card with a QR code and a series of warnings – not the least of which is the comprehensive list of trigger warnings that Big Brother is good enough to provide. Your pre-show drink is provided in a plain paper cup – even the restroom is plastered with 1984 propaganda.
The star of this play is the script, which pulls no punches, and which at a 1 hour, 45-minute runtime (no intermission), offers the audience and exhausting but cathartic experience. Unlike the linear narrative of the novel, this stage adaptation trips around in time and space, allowing the audience the experience of a valiant attempt to figure out where – and when – we are. Scenes slip into one another, punctuated by startling sound and light transitions – (Not exactly Theater of Cruelty, but Artaud would approve.) Only with the last scene does the first scene make sense, in this masterfully constructed story.
Nick Truglio’s direction is commendable if, for no other reason, than the for the orchestration of design team and actors through this perilous play. He, with his team of light, projection, sound designers – manage to fit a play that would be a challenge for a space twice Benchmark’s size into a tight, claustrophobic package. Some scenes are played are on a split set, with the lines of demarcation blurred between here and there, past and present. Some scenes are performed entirely off-stage, with the audience able to view them only through the on-stage televisions, amping up the level of surreality (“is this actually happening now? Where are we/when are we?). The puzzle-like set shifts, as we are jarred with Winston Smith from safety to peril, from surety to questioning.
It’s 10 tons of story in a five pound bag.
Sean Scrutchins as Winston Smith is an empathetic everyman whose desperation and anti-fanatic-fanaticism reels the audience in for the sucker punches of the play’s second half. His performance is earnest; he is that guy that would like to believe we would be brave and smart enough to be, if, in fact, he really is being brave or smart. Dan O’Neill, as O’Brien, is at once charming and terrifying, and is most powerful when he delivers the words of a monster with the kindness and sincerity of your favorite fifth-grade teacher. Only Rebecca Buckley’s Julia feels like a weak link, failing to find the opposites in range between the character’s external face of party advocate and her private face of sexual freedom fighter. The face is there, the sex is not, as her performance seems to stick in the cold headspace of the party.
The supporting roles are excellently cast shapeshifters, transforming under Truglio’s choreographic direction, with standout performances by Ryan Omar Stack, as the quiet, grinning, and deeply unnerving Martin, and Lorelei Keppler, the obligatory terrifying Child.
1984, as a novel and a play, is unquestionably relevant to today’s social and political landscape, with terrifying malleability of facts placed front and center. The phrases “Fake news” and “Truth isn’t truth,” could have been a natural fit in the 1947 novel or the 2019 play.
But the word “relevant” has almost become cheap in our cultural milieu. Anything that peers into the dark, dystopian future is “relevant,” whether it’s the “killed” world of Mad Max Fury Road, or the brutal caste system of The Handmaid’s Tale. “Relevance” is everywhere. Relevance is easy.
But this something a little different.
Maybe it’s the citizens screaming like animals during the “Two Minutes Hate;” maybe it’s the child directing accusations of “Thought Criminal” at startled adults; maybe it’s audience itself straining toward the many on-stage screens for an ounce of comfort…but it’s all so familiar, in that unique way that actually reminds you, without being mawkish, that’s it’s way too familiar.
Theater gets to put a human in the same room with you, and begging you desperately for help, as you, passively, sit in the audience, mere feet away. Theater places you in the mind of Winston Smith and disorients you in the same slippery time, space, and memory that he is navigating. And this play, at least, offers no apology, and no comfort.
The novel was published in 1947. The new-classic John Hurt film version in 1984. And here we are, in 2019, recognizing that this story is still, tragically… “relevant.”
We are in 2019. This story is 72 year old. And Benchmark’s production of 1984 manages to remind its audience to look and question…. “Where are you. Right now. Where do you think you are?”
Benchmark Theatre’s 1984runs through April 13. More information can be found at http://www.benchmarktheatre.com/benchmarkhome.
Photos courtesy of Benchmark Theatre