The Stage – 5th June 2006
Peter Hall’s musical adaptation of
the George Orwell classic is that rare thing, a play that is almost better than
the original book. The Communist propaganda is never more absurd and blatant
than when delivered by Lucien MacDougall’s nasty little Squealer or Ben
Roberts’ boorish Comrade Napoleon.
Stephen Edwards takes a deep breath
and fills the stage with a cast of nine professional actors in the key roles
and 26 local people to play the animals. Their mass presence on the stage could
have been overwhelming and certainly takes some arranging. But they are so
expertly attuned to their animal personas that their body language and their
four-legged movement on adapted elbow crutches remains fascinating to observe
throughout.
A two-tier set on the revolve allows
for spectacle in the building and destruction of the mill and also serves as a
visual marker of the pigs’ progress towards human behaviour. All the principals
deserve credit for the quality of their interpretation, but there are
particularly moving performances from Dickon Tyrrell as the stolid and faithful
workhorse, Boxer, and Sarah Head as Clover. The black dogs of the KGB are a
vicious and sinister presence.
Adrian Mitchell’s lyrics get robust
treatment, especially in chorus numbers like Beasts of England, and the rolling
soundscape of keyboard music has a strong narrative quality to it. The more you
know about Russian politics, the more you get out of the play, but the beauty
of it is the number of levels on which it works.