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The fierce intelligence of the Almeida, Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse’s spin on George Orwell shines through – but the play contributes to a worrying theatrical trend

It seems a suitably Orwellian reward to the extraordinary success story that is Nottingham Playhouse’s co-production of 1984.

This stunning play is both a bold reinvention of George Orwell’s great postwar novel and remarkably faithful to it.

Headlong’s adaptation of George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ is such a sense-overloadingly visceral experience that it was only the second time around, as it transfers to the West End, that I realised quite how political it was. 

The first thing to be said about this thrilling stage version … is that it brings the Orwellian nightmare vividly alive.

George Orwell’s seminal work anticipated not just the surveillance state, but the destruction of language that enables the manipulation of thought.

Themes of ‘1984’ remain a conversation starter

When action finally erupts about two thirds of the way through, the impact is overwhelming.

The American Repertory Theater is hosting a British production of George Orwell’s “1984” that should shake the cobwebs from your head about a book that many of us last read in high school and barely remember.

This production is a stunning example of the ability of live theater to immerse an audience in the story, to make them feel what the characters feel, and to leave them thinking about what it all means.

The show now onstage at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge adapted and directed by Robert Icke & Duncan Macmillan is visually shocking and hauntingly acted, a nightmare of twisted reality, torture, and paranoia made flesh.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to “1984.”