1984
“I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but . . . something resembling it could arrive,” said George Orwell of his 1949 novel 1984. Writing at the dawn of the cold war, Orwell prophesied a totalitarian state at once highly advanced and woefully inefficient, where socialist revolution had turned in upon itself. He’d issued a similar warning in Animal Farm, his 1945 fable about farm animals who overthrow their human master only to become slaves of the pigs. Like 1984 the book was set in England; clearly the message was “it can happen here too.”
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Lookingglass’s earnest 1984 tells of drab everyman Winston Smith, a resident of London–now an outpost of the transatlantic empire Oceania, whose mainland is the former United States. Oceania is in a state of constant war with Eurasia and/or Eastasia; alliances change, but the paranoia is permanent. A functionary in the Records Department, Winston works, eats, and sleeps under surveillance by “telescreens” that from time to time broadcast upbeat news from the front, mandatory “exerthenics” fitness sessions, and images of Oceania’s ruler, the ever watchful Big Brother. (In the novel Smith alters newspaper reports to adhere to political orthodoxy; in Lookingglass’s multimedia staging, he edits video footage for broadcast, removing the doubts expressed by some soldiers about Oceania’s occupation of another country.)
By eliminating the complexity of language, the rulers of Oceania seek to reduce not only Smith’s capacity for complex thinking but his desire for it. And it’s not far from “War Is Peace”–or Orwell’s most famous one-liner, Animal Farm’s dictum that “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”–to today’s cliches: “Read my lips,” “Hope is on the way.” These are the tactics employed by demagogic dictators, campaign strategists, the military, and advertising copywriters–all those for whom, as O’Brien puts it, “the object of power is power.”
Yet for viewers in the first couple of rows this might be a worthy introduction to Orwell’s story and anthropomorphic characters. We’ve all known people like Boxer, the horse whose response to every new sign of his leader’s corruption and incompetence is to work harder. We’ve also known folks like the horse Mollie, who willingly returns to enslavement by humans in return for sugar cubes and colored ribbons in her mane.
Where: Lookingglass Theatre Company, Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan
Where: Bailiwick Repertory, Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont
