1984

Part 1 of John von Düffel’s stage adaptation of George Orwell’s famous dystopia remains faithful to the original up to the arrest of Winston Smith and his girlfriend Julia, who had attempted to secretly resist the totalitarian regime of the surveillance state. But then the focus shifts, and in part 2 the play focuses primarily on what happens next to Julia, who was betrayed by Winston under torture. Like him, she too undergoes brutal treatment at the hands of the system – a perspective that Orwell neglects in his novel. At the same time, the scenes become more fragmentary, identities are manipulated, and hardly anyone can be sure who they are or who the person opposite them is, whilst events escalate into a surreal nightmare. The vision of the future thus becomes a present that can be experienced first-hand, and the brainwashing the characters undergo spills over onto the theatre audience as an almost physical experience.