In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of a British stage version of 1984. Here’s an excerpt.

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Like all great parables, George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” long ago cast off from the dock of its original intent and set sail on the sea of ambiguity. When Orwell published the book in 1948, he meant for it to be read as a plausible nightmare, a cautionary portrait of (in his words) “what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English-speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office.” But a quarter-century after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, anyone who now puts the novel on the stage or screen is more likely to have a different tale to tell, and a different reason for telling it.

Enter Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, whose freely adapted 2014 stage version of “1984” has just transferred to Broadway from London’s West End. Messrs. Icke and Macmillan, who double as the show’s directors, have updated the tale of Winston Smith (played by Tom Sturridge) by using a huge video screen suspended over the stage to portray the modern digital technology with which Big Brother and his henchmen spy on the hapless Winston and his fellow citizens. The idea, I assume, is to make “Nineteen Eighty-Four” more immediately relevant to our latter-day age of digital post-privacy.

We may also safely assume, however, that those responsible for bringing “1984” to Broadway were well aware of the fact that Orwell’s novel shot to the top of the U.S. best-seller lists in the immediate wake of Donald Trump’s election to the presidency. Lest we forget, Winston Smith worked in the Ministry of Truth, Orwell’s fictional purveyors of “fake news” and “alternative facts” avant la lettre, which explains the sudden explosion of interest in the book. But while theater in America lately seems to be aspiring to the condition of All Trump, All the Time, no attempt has been made to shoehorn boo-hiss-stone-him-to-death references to the president into this play or its production. What we have here, instead, is a multimedia extravaganza à la “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,” one whose moral, insofar as I can tease it out, is that Big Brother is watching us right this second….

The rest of “1984,” however, is broadly faithful to the novel, with Orwell’s moral—that the unforgivable sin of totalitarianism is to erase the past and make all truth relative—left wholly intact. The continuing applicability of this moral to current events makes it regrettable that “1984” isn’t more theatrically potent than it turns out to be….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the original British production of 1984:

The 1956 film version of 1984, directed by Michael Anderson, scored by Malcolm Arnold, and starring Edmond O’Brian and Michael Redgrave:

Garson Kanin talks about his friendship with Thornton Wilder in a 1987 interview. Kanin wrote Born Yesterday, co-wrote the screenplays for Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike, and directed the original Broadway productions of The Diary of Anne Frank and Funny Girl:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“The test of an adventure is that when you’re in the middle of it, you say to yourself, ‘Oh, now I’ve got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.’ And the sign that something’s wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.”

Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker

My most recent appearance on Theater Talk, the weekly TV series hosted by Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel, is being telecast in two parts. As was the case last week, I’m part of a panel of drama critics discussing the spring season on Broadway. Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, Linda Winer, and I have even more to say on the latest hit shows, some of it testy but all of it, I hope, good-humored. (The remainder of the episode is devoted to an interview with Joel Gray.)

If you live in the New York area, our second episode will air on WNET at 1:30 a.m. on Friday (or, to be exact, Saturday morning) and 11:30 a.m. on Sunday. As always, it will also be televised on other channels, and you’ll be able to view the episode on line next week by going here.

For more information on air dates and times, go here.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Groundhog Day (musical, G/PG-13, some shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, closes August 20, reviewed here)

IN LENOX, MASS.:
• 4000 Miles (drama, PG-13/R, closes July 16, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Present Laughter (comedy, PG-13, closes July 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, original production reviewed here)

“Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.”

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

My latest appearance on CUNY-TV’s Theater Talk, a discussion of the second half of the Broadway season just past, can now be viewed online. The hosts are Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel and the other panelists are Peter Marks of Washington Post, Elisabeth Vincentelli of the New York Times and The New Yorker, and Linda Winer of Newsday:

Suzanne Farrell Ballet dances an excerpt from George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, set to the music of Mozart, at the 2005 Kennedy Center Honors ceremony. Farrell is briefly seen watching the performance:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.”

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (courtesy of Shoshana Greenberg)

From 2004:

Anyone who writes a serious book with the expectation of making a lot of money and/or becoming famous is a fool. If you can’t afford to write a book in your spare time for its own sake, you’re in the wrong business….

Read the whole thing here.