HACKNEY TOWN HALL – UNTIL 22nd DECEMBER 2024
Reviewed by Jackie Thornton
4****
It is the age of Total Surveillance, everything you say or do is scrutinised, even your
innermost thoughts. As numbers are allocated and we’re shepherded onto wooden benches while two singers play incongruously upbeat acoustic numbers, it’s time for our assessment to begin. Will we the audience pass the test and be inaugurated into the Thought Police, ready to spy on our neighbours and rewrite the past?
Directed by Jack Reardon, George Orwell’s dystopian cautionary tale 1984 is adapted by Adam Taub into chilling immersive theatre which aptly refuses us the position of passive bystander.
Specialising in reimagining classic stories in unique environments, Pure Expression sets up camp inside the imposing Hackney Town Hall, inviting us into one of its elegant Art Deco council chambers to hear a rousing speech from O’Brien, played with unsettling menace by Dominic Carter. Every inch of Winston and Julia’s forbidden romance is captured by a camera crew and projected onto a lofty wall, adding extra resonance to Joe Anderson’s intensity and Neetika Knight’s allure. Harsh red light from Ben Jacob’s lighting design further underpins the unnerving atmosphere and it should be noted that this production does not hold back in its depictions of torture.
For those already familiar with Orwell’s novel, this is a good opportunity to soak up the dread and anxiety fittingly dreamt up by the author as the world drifted from WWII into the Cold War. It definitely still feels like we’re in the 1940s with nods to the dark blues and greys of Soviet fashion with its long skirts and high necks standing against Western excesses. Indeed, apart from the roving live cameras, this production resists making modern references to fake news and our own extreme online and digital cultures, rather ironically allowing the audience to do the thinking for ourselves. It is certainly at its most powerful when making us complicit in its cruel regime.