Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the most familiar novels around, thanks to the
phrases it added to our language: ‘Big Brother’, ‘Room 101’, ‘doublethink’. It doesn’t hurt either that it’s on the GCSE syllabus.
In 3rd week, an adaptation of Orwell’s dystopian tale will come to the Keble O’Reilly, produced by Rough Hewn.
Three Rough Hewn plays for Trinity make up the ‘Darkness Visible’ season including Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Winterling and Middle England. These are all plays that deal with the idea of being watched, which adds an extra dimension
when it’s staged and so watched by an audience.Indeed, director Luke Rollason is keen to make the audience part of Airstrip One, the fictional country where Winston lives. “Doing it in traverse means that not only are the actors being watched on both sides, but also that both halves of the audience are watching each other, which interestingly is incredibly immersive”.
Harley Viveash was in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof last term, as well as The Get-Out, which Rollason acted in too.
This term Viveash assumes the mantel of Winston in Nineteen Eighty-Four, so it’s a relief not to have to put on a Northern Irish or Southern American accent this time round. Winston is often portrayed as an ‘everyman’, who Orwell uses
to show the world around him rather than delve deep into his character,
Is it difficult to play Winston with conviction? Viveash said the ‘everyman’ label was not something he agreed with: “Winston stands out; I think he’s more of an everyman in the sense that he is not a typical fearless hero. Instead, he’s consumed with rebellious thoughts, but who at the start of the play is not brave enough to do anything radical about it, which I think is why he’s hopefully a character people will connect with. There aren’t many of us who can say we’d be any braver in his situation.”
Both Rollason and Viveash picked the Two Minute Hate as a really exciting point in the production. In the book, the Two Minute Hate is when the entire population are made to stop work, cluster round screens in offices and squares and channel all of their anger into the state’s enemies. The trailer has men wearing jumpsuits, clustered round a TV. The hatred on their face is real
but it is difficult to translate the scale of 1984 to the contained space of a theatre: “you’ve got to create the sense of a populated world where everyone is constantly under surveillance” says Rollason, but adds, “I like to see it less as an issue, more as a challenge.” The Two Minute Hate combines
video, physical theatre and original music:, involving the entire cast and hopefully the audience too.
Viveash places the book as “one of my all-time favourites” and hopes to do Winston justice: “so much of the play hangs on the relationships between
Winston and those around him, the most intimate of all being his relationship with his lover”. Julia is played by Alice Porter, who Viveash says is a “real laugh. If you’ve got to be rolling around on the floor half-naked with someone,
you need to have a good relationship with them to stop it being the most awkward thing on earth, so it’s great that Alice and I get on so well!”
