"1984" - Playhouse, Leeds

I usually go see a play once a month at the Leeds Playhouse. I have over the last years seen quite a range, from "Shelley" - turned out to be feminist lefty production  - 0 out of 10 to "Toad of Toad Hall" 9 out of 10, which I thought would be a production for children, but I was highly delighted when it turned out to be a great play for everyone and extremely well produced.

To see a play is a far more interesting thing when compared to film or TV.

The great thing about a stage production - and luckily yesterday I managed to get front row seats - is that you are fair more immersed in the production, with real live actors in front of you and the feel, smell and hearing of the play all around you.

But is has to be 10 out of 10 for the current play adaptation of "1984"

"1984" by George Orwell is a book which I have pushed all Nationalists to read. It is a very grim yet very clever prophecy of what a future Globalist world would be like.

Orwell wrote it in 1948  reversing the last two numbers around to come up with 1984.

Of course, the year 1984 has come and gone, yet each years brings us closer to his prediction to a Britain ruled by "Big brother". In the book, Britain doesn't have even its name any longer and is called "Airstrip One"

There was a scary additional ending to this play, and in case you are going to see it then I will not let the cat out of the bag, but it is quite mind-twisting.

This from the Leeds Playhouse review:-
"Headlong and Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company present

1984

By George Orwell

A new adaptation created by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan

Text by Duncan Macmillan

Directed by Robert Icke

 April, 1984. 13:00. Comrade 6079, Winston Smith, thinks a thought, starts a diary, and falls in love. But Big Brother is watching him - and the door to Room 101 can swing open in the blink of an eye.

Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell's fiction is often said to be our reality. The definitive book of the 20^th century is re-examined in a radical new staging exploring surveillance, identity and how thinking you can fly might actually be the first step to flying. 

This new major production explores the world inside Winston Smith's head, as well as the world without, and catches the euphoria and bliss buried deep underneath the cold face of Big Brother. In an age of mass surveillance, 'total' policing and GPS tracking,1984i s as relevant now as it ever was.

Headlong continues to interrogate our most important cultural texts, following productions of Faustus, Six Characters In Search Of An Author, King Lear, Medea, Romeo and Juliet and The Seagull.  

'The country's most exciting touring company' (The Telegraph)