1984

A comic version of George Orwell's dystopian classic, with puppets? Well, it sounds like a joke. But this staging of the book which brought us the concept of Big Brother is seriously ingenious - even if it doesn't quite terrify you with the thought of who or what might be pulling your own strings.

Orwell's novel tells the story of one man's desperately private rebellion against the groupthink of a tyrannical state. But theatre is a collective experience and Blind Summit's great inspiration here is to re-tell the tale of 'thought criminal' Winston and his lover Julia as a cautionary drama, performed for the party faithful by 7 blank-eyed members of Big Brother's collective (and one puppet). The mismatch between the crass jackbooted enthusiasmof the brownshirt brigade and Winston's humane yearning for truth and love makes a powerful point. It also makes energetic and engaging physical theatre. The actors limp, robo-walk and goosestep across the stage, their postures and expressions arranged like crude exclamations. They're as unsubtle as the daubed propaganda posters and the cardboard box-faced prole puppet that define the political aesthetic here. It's 'newspeak' in action: Orwell's state destroys rebellion by abolishing the words which permit thought; here it's the dramatic language that's stunted, and every bit of crude comedy also flags up the loss of humanity that Orwell described as a 'boot stamping on a human face...forever'.

Simon Scardifield's Winston grows ever-more subtle while those around him remain puppets and caricatures. That's one reason why his dark and broken end lacks power here: it's hard to feel the impact of torture when it's expressed by flailing yelps and a cardboard lever: harder still when his torturers are a gaggle of tics and funny walks. The script loses clarity towards the end and it's increasingly awkward to imagine that something as subversive as a play would be put on by Big Brother when telescreens are so much more effective at creating hate-filled zombies. As Orwell put it, 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' At least the talent, political commitment and exuberant energy on display here gives you hope for our own future.