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FOR a dystopian vision of the future, Northern Ballet’s adaptation of 1984 is curiously old-fashioned.
Party members wear trouser braces, the peeling wallpaper in Winston Smith’s flat is straight out of the 1970s and propaganda posters have a 1940s typeface. Alex Baranowski’s score, meanwhile, is classically based rather than industrial or electronic.
With a multitude of pixelated telescreens watching every movement, it’s nonetheless a recognisable past-present which an audience can identify with.
The eyes of the omnipotent Big Brother fall on party members with squares of spotlight as they work in regimented lines, their blue uniforms denying them individuality.
This ultra-surveillance society is persuasively contrasted with the shadowy, ungoverned streets inhabited by the proles. Free from uniform, their group movements are unsynchronised in their drunken debauchery and unquestioning impoverishment.
It’s in this strata of society that Winston (Isaac Lee-Baker, pictured) and Julia (Dreda Blow) find the security to conduct their illicit love affair.
Hidden in a spare room, Julia wears a feminine dress in the red hue of the proles and the couple’s movements become free and sensuous as they cling to one another in desperation and then affection.
These scenes effectively build tension towards the story’s doomed conclusion but they’re severely let down by the second act.
As the couple are taken in and then betrayed by the deceptively charming O’Brien (Ashley Dixon), a member of the thought police, the action moves into the Ministry of Love.
Rather than being a nightmarish place of physical and mental torture, Winston is dealt with in a perfunctory manner that lacks visceral impact. This means that his ultimate betrayal of Julia loses its shattering significance and it’s not until the closing scene that any emotional power is conveyed.
This crucial weakness doesn’t lessen the impact of Andrzej Goulding and Simon Daw’s set and video design or Jonathan Watkins’s choreography in the earlier scenes.
But it does rather diminish George Orwell’s vision of a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Tours until May 2016, details: northernballet.com
Review by Susan Darlington
