Anna Burnside reviews a ‘thoughtful new adaptation’ of the classic--and pertinent--story.
In Hairmyres Hospital, racked with the TB that would soon kill him, George Orwell was ordered to lie flat and recover. Instead, he sat up in bed, smoked heavily, and worked on the novel that would become 1984.
The writer and journalist had been shot in the throat while fighting with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Treating him in Scotland was a thoracic surgeon who had fought for the other side.
Using this real-life encounter as a framing device is a clever way of recontextualising Orwell’s familiar classic. Chris Hannan’s thoughtful new adaptation grounds the story in the author’s experiences of Stalinist brutality on the streets of 1930s Barcelona, where propaganda posters inspired the Ministry of Truth where his character Winston Smith would work.
Then, under Dominic Hill’s fleet-footed direction, Orwell’s hospital bed becomes a joyless cot, and Jack Tarlton leaps out of bed and into his regulation party boiler suit to become Winston Smith.
Hannan keeps the pot boiling by downplaying the most hackneyed tropes in the novel. Screens are minimal, instead there are projections by video designer Heather Scott along the top third of the open stage space. Big Brother is referred to rarely and never seen.
Only at the end, with Smith’s drawn out disintegration and torture, does the pacing flag.
Jack Tarlton is brilliantly cast as Orwell and Smith, matching the author’s description of 1984’s protagonist so closely I examined his legs for varicose veins. He plays Smith with the childlike wonder of a man discovering love and chocolate for the first time.
Jessica Hardwick is fresh and believable as the younger but more worldly Julia, desperate to fling off the uniform of the Anti Sex League and leap into bed.
The rest of the cast do a tremendous job. Irene MacDougall’s O’Brien is nuanced and nasty while Robert Jack is a thoughtful and articulate surgeon-fascist.
Hill’s creative team set it all in a world that is recognisably Orwell’s and distinctively Hill’s. Tom Piper’s set captures the bleakness of Smith’s day-to-day while Nikola Kodjabashia’s nerve-grinding soundscape ramps up the tension.
It’s a shame that, with language, free speech and democracy under threat, we need a new production of 1984. The good news is that Hill et al rise to the considerable challenge.
1984 performs at Citizens Theatre in Glasgow until 26 September 2026. It then tours to Dundee Rep (30 September) and the Royal Lyceum Edinburgh (27 October-7 November).
Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic
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