1984

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

In 1949 George Orwell stunned the world with his “Big Brother Watching You” 1984 novel. As the year 1984 crept closer, shock melted into a good grief he was perceptive syndrome. With technology escalating, surveillance cameras crept into obvious and weird spaces, and now show up in cell phones, buttonholes, false eyeballs, dog collars, stuffed teddy bears, and flower bouquets. The once upon a time weird becomes the expected norm.

Paul Page and Dell Domnick in the Miner’s Alley production of 1984.

Playwright Walter L. Newton adapted the detailed novel for the stage, currently in production at Miners Alley Playhouse in Golden. Rick Bernstein producer directs the 17-member cast (if you include the two rats Bob and Ziggie who are listed in the program but not seen).

1984 is far more than surveillance cameras. Big Brother really does watch everything and everyone monitoring speech, behavior, making certain everyone subscribes to the stark erased to the nub philosophy of Big Brother. A new dictionary is in the works to rub out any superfluous words. Adjectives aren’t necessary, and adverbs have no place anywhere. The word good can be kept, but the word bad is deemed unnecessary. Instead of using the word bad, “ungood” works just as well. (I am in such big trouble with Big Brother’s dictionary.) Sex is for procreation only, not for recreation.

Humanity has been stripped to obedient, walking robots that dare not express emotion of any kind, who dare not exercise an original thought. Big Brother does the thinking. Anyone caught with the slightest infraction is cruelly manhandled, beaten and frequently sent to Room 101.

On a stark white set, with a video taking over upper center stage with the image of Big Brother borrowed from Bob Conklin. Prior to the beginning of the show, the video reflects the audience, and then Big Brother takes over, seeing everything, hearing everything, repeating expectations while using the voice of Chris Bleau. Because it is 1984, the set designed by Sarah Roshan flirts with shivers of hard, cold, barren society it reflects. Practicality is the word. Design of any kind totally unnecessary.

Even with a solid cast, the script has problems from the very beginning. I am not all certain the detailed story will allow itself to be confined in a two-hour production. A great deal is lost in the translation. The result is a cast of robots with minds stonewashed along with every pair of jeans.

Ah, yes, there are exceptions. Winston Smith stands out played by Dell Domnick. Wearing the robotic attitude, Smith hangs onto to his thought process for dear life while attempting to match the robotic style.

Emanuel Goldstein, played by Charlie Taylor, manages to break into the video airwaves taking a stand against Big Brother, hinting there is a way out. Smith tries to find out more about Goldstein. Accidentally on purpose bumping into Smith, Julia played by Julie Rada slips Smith a note that simply says she loves him.

Smith remembers a Mrs. Charington (Priscilla Young) who told him she has an upstairs room without a video monitor. He meets with her, believes her, and takes the room for him and Julia.

Stoic O’Brien wonderfully played by Paul Page, works on the dictionary and shares some of his thoughts with Smith. Thinking the new addition would be helpful to Smith he invites him to his apartment. Smith takes Julia and is immediately taken to task for doing so. Rather than an updated version of the dictionary, Smith finds exactly what he is looking for, a copy of Goldstein’s philosophy. O’Brien was scary at times because his eyes revealed a depth of revelation speaking volumes. Everyone else seems to be paper doll museum pieces, mechanical robots. With all of the sci-fi movies and videos on outer space people, and robots, this production becomes kindergarten.

The problem in Act I is it all happens too fast. Rather than compelling, the script becomes boring. Nothing happens except an outline of what could happen.

Smith and Julia get caught, but because of their stupidity they deserve everything they get. In a world where nothing but Big Brother can be trusted, why would anyone trust O’Brien much less the faked tottering old woman Mrs. Charington who is anything but an old woman? Even the audience can see that. How can Smith and Julia miss the obvious?

Because the cast has very little to work with, the characters get lost in the shuffle, with one bright exception Paul Page. Page engulfs a personality fitting snugly into Big Brother’s objective, creating deception, using his eyes as telescopes, his eyebrows as antennas, his facial expressions to entice and deceive, projecting a manner of mystery, coated with a thin veneer of ‘trust me if you dare.’

Act II does carry a little more substance. The double scene showing the interrogation of O’Brien with Smith and Mrs. Charington with Julia is well planned and executed with the underscoring of Jacob M. Welch’s lighting design. The only problem is it becomes repetitive and goes on way too long. Electric shocks are applied to Smith and Julia whenever they cling to their truth fighting the false belief system. Repetitive screaming, however, does not make for scary. It becomes dull and dragged out.

Jeff Ashbaugh and Nikki Seabaugh as the Thought Police command attention even though they have not one spoken word. Their focus is eye catching.

Smith blames himself for stealing a small piece of chocolate out of his younger sister’s hands, runs away, only to return to find rats have taken over the house having devoured his mother and sister. Certainly even as a small boy he should have suspected Big Brother, but his guilt wouldn’t let him go there. When O’Brien takes him to the infamous Room 101, what better form of intimidation than one’s own fears? With his face pushed into a rat cage supposedly full of hungry rats eager to tear into his flesh, even Smith will cave in. The problem is the cage gives no indication anyone or anything is actually inside it. Yes, the program does say The Rats as themselves played by Bob and Ziggie. The cage is too small to even see the included stuffed rats. The somewhat quiet empty cage sticks out like a sore thumb. Rattails of something hanging out would at least pacify the illusion of hungry rats. Smith’s terrified screams don’t help at all.

Over all, the play seems to go in circles, going nowhere doing nothing, accomplishing nothing and a far cry from the intricacies of the novel. The cast does the best with what they have. They just don’t have much to work with.

A play must have characters who are cared about one-way or the other. They may make you grind your teeth, or elicit sympathy, compassion or a sense of understanding or leave you wincing with “who invited him to the party?” Smith and Julia walk into the situation with their blind eyes folded inside out. They deserve exactly what they get. It is difficult to feel compassion for blind stupidity and flippant trust.

Strangely enough the only character one could have any feelings for is O’Brien, simply because there is a depth quality and mystery to his character. One has the thought there is more to him than even he is willing to reveal. Hidden in the mystery is the possibility he is cunning enough to hide something from Big Brother.

There are comments especially from Julia concerning the spiritual nature of humanity. “They can make you say anything” she muses with Smith, “they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.” Herein lies the beginning of a full-fledged character, but Julia is never given an opportunity to delve into her, and Rada is hampered by what she doesn’t have.

This production of 1984 appears to be too big of a bite to chew for one script. The script seems passé in 2006. In the ’70s many of us were already talking about Big Brother watching you with all of the surveillance cameras hanging around. By 1984 it really did seem passé. Bush pushing to monitor telephone calls keeping a list of who’s calling whom and where overseas because there just might be a terrorist hiding behind every leaf, doesn’t come close to resembling the intrusive Big Brother. That’s another story, perhaps for another play. Brute power isn’t as scary as deception such as what appears in our political system, at the moment. Big business deception, war deception small business deception, when one can’t trust and believe what one hears now that’s scary.

Hopefully, Newton will take 1984 back to the drawing board to give us a reason to care about Smith and Julia, to move out of the blah, bland, dull gray atmosphere, to delve more into the mysterious, to flirt with the question how could this happen? And to speak to the relevancy of right here and right now. As it now stands, 1984 didn’t do anything to me or for me, but then what do I know? Go see it. Let’s talk.