[title]
The title of this play is a bit misleading: it’s only a partial adaptation of George Orwell’s 1933 memoirs – the Paris half. We’re first introduced to the young Orwell (Richard Delaney) – going by his real name, Eric Blair – fresh out of Eton and keen to experience a bit of real life in the slums of 1920s Paris, falling in with an underclass of drunks, ex-soldiers and raggedy bohemians. Eighty years later, it’s journalist Polly Toynbee (Karen Ascoe) who’s down and out in the Big Smoke – as research for her 2003 book ‘Hard Work’, she moves into a council flat, signs on the dole and then takes on a string of menial zero-hours jobs.
David Byrne’s production intricately splices the two threads together, the cast swapping roles, costumes and time periods at breakneck speed. At first, each narrative is kept separate, and then grow more tightly interwoven until they overlap in one glorious scene where Blair slaves away as a kitchen plongeur in the bowels of a hotel while Toynbee struggles against NHS bureaucracy temping as a hospital porter.
Of course, the point is to draw parallels between the two experiences, and there are plenty. Both writers are worn down by the system in which they struggle: Blair treks miles across Paris in search of work; Toynbee wastes hours in the queue at the Jobcentre. Both feel guilt-stricken by their privileged backgrounds, knowing all too well that those around them don’t have the same safety net.
The balance between the two doesn’t always succeed – the much-needed humour that buoys Orwell’s memoir is absent from the London half – but for the most part the comparisons this play seeks to make are deft and compelling. By the sombre end, we are no longer in the company of Blair but a changed and radicalised man: George Orwell. He hopes that the future will be a kinder place for those less fortunate in society. Which it is; how much kinder is what this play asks