Just as shocking — but starting to show its age

1984, Royal Exchange Theatre

AFTER a thrilling “Macbeth” last year, Oldham-born director Matthew Dunster returns to open the Exchange’s new season with his own adaptation of one of the most significant novels of the 20th century.

Orwell’s famous dystopian tale of Thought Police and Big Brother would seem ideal material for a theatre practitioner who has displayed an uncanny ability to present intensity in his work.

And so it proves: in terms of its storytelling, this “1984” is a deeply felt, intense and, in the second act, frequently harrowing story of fear, interrogation and torture at the hands of a faceless state.

What revisiting the story does show is that basic idea apart — and this is a book of massively important ideas — the narrative of Orwell’s book is showing its political age.

When it was written, in 1949, there was no international terror, no internet to insidiously police, no thought of Guantanamo or rendition. In some ways current Big Brother methods are more subtle, more pervasive and for far less valid reasons. Freedom isn’t being taken from us, we’re giving it away.

Strong though this production is, events and history have rendered it a little old-hat.

This doesn’t mean it fails to shock, depress and disgust in almost equal measure.

After the first act, in which history-changer Winston meets and falls in love with Julia, and we see their love grow before being cruelly dashed, the second act is a whole new level of unpleasantness.

It begins oddly enough, with the embodiment of the Party’s opposition, Goldstein, delivering a lecture on the structure of society, which seems to last rather a long time (despite the superb delivery of Paul Moriarty) with little stage action. It helps to extend the running time to three hours. What follows is the lovers’ capture, torture, the horrors of the Ministry of Love and the terror of Winston’s Room 101. It’s an hour of pure nastiness performed with highly realistic intensity and charge.

At the centre of this torture is Jonathan McGuinness’s tremendous performance as Winston; slight, fearful, but keen to be free — especially when he meets beautiful Julia (Caroline Bartleet, in a strong, uninhibited performance from someone not long out of drama school).

McGuinness’s portrayal of Winston’s pain at the hands of O’Brien (an equally strong Matthew Flynn) is harrowing at times, sending shock waves into the audience — just like Orwell did, 61 years ago.