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.