Brandeis Players staged 1984 this weekend, a play production of the classic George Orwell novel written by Michael Gene Sullivan. While the cast conveyed the intensity and emotion required for the serious material, the execution of the play at times left me baffled.

The play centers on Winston Smith (Reno Kersey '17), as four "party members" and their diabolical leader O'Brien (Brian Dorfman '16) interrogate him. Winston lives in the "future" year 1984 in the state of Oceania, which is run by the omnipotent Big Brother. The play begins at the point in the novel in which the thought police capture and interrogate Winston. As Winston recounts his "thought crimes" and his treasonous actions, four party members re-enact the past events of the novel, as Winston tells them or as they read them from Winston's diary. All the while, an acerbic voiceover reminds Winston to "be precise."

The voice felt most jarring the first time Winston was electrocuted, as strobe lights flickered and Kersey writhed on the floor, with the voice still using the same flat, condescending tone. Director Sarah Waldron '17 wrote in her director's note, "This is not the play for the faint hearted," which proves to be true-as the show progresses, Winston is tortured more and more, and it becomes harder and harder to watch. By the end, O'Brien massages a broken Winston, as he drools and mumbles. Kersey was committed to his role, giving a visceral performance.
One of the problems presented by the strong emotions and intensity of the play was that this often made the dialogue incomprehensible. Each cast member would occasionally have this problem, but the one who suffered from this most was Kersey. At times the dialogue was not as important as the emotion Kersey was trying to display as Winston, and his wild speech reflected Winston's loss of control over his life and mind. However, any time Kersey would yell or cry, what he was saying was hard to hear. In one scene, he describes the root of his huge fear of rats, but through his mumbled ranting I missed the story. 

Similarly, as one party member read aloud from Goldstein's book, the infamous, evil and continuous enemy of Big Brother, which detailed the tenets behind Oceania's foundation, the other party members stomped around the stage to act it out. Their actions did not match what was being read aloud, and it distracted from the important material discussing this dystopian society.

The use of the party members also was convoluted and confusing at times. At first, the party members would act out passages from Winston's diary in a flashback style. The flashbacks were indicated as the second party member, played by Samantha LeVangie '14, would let down her hair to indicate a flashback was occurring. It became clear later, as Winston and the other party members joined in, that these scenes were taking place within the jail room, not just solely as an enactment of a past event. Whether this involvement with the re-enactment scenes developed over time or was always present was unclear, but the sudden transition left me feeling whiplashed. 

Some of the richer moments of 1984 came from this greater involvement between the party members and Winston. The party member playing Winston during the flashback scenes once accidentally says, "I love her" of his fellow party member, who is playing Winston's lover, instead of saying "he loves her." This causes a fight to break out among the party members. At another moment, a party member is instructed to read from the illicit Goldstein book, and his fear is apparent. Others take their goal to "heal" Winston's mind to heart, and show extreme discomfort as O'Brien tortures him. These emotional outbursts add another dimension to the otherwise interchangeable, unnamed characters. 

Turning to 1984's logistics, the set, designed by Jessica Pizzuti '15, was a simple design that did not change throughout the play. The stage was decorated with tall gray walls, a few low benches and the monitoring "telescreens" for Big Brother's messages. The plain, gray walls reflected the prison setting that Winston remained in throughout the show. The screens were used rather awkwardly, however, as a party member would stand on a bench so that his face was in front of the screen, while a red or green light was projected on him. He would then speak as Big Brother, while the other party members congregated around to hear his message. At one point, one party member stood on a bench to speak and there was no light, leaving me unsure if this was a Big Brother speech with an error or just a zealous party member. 

1984 was an unashamedly dramatic and intense show, with actors who were consumed by their characters' raw emotions, but some difficulties caused the play to miss its mark. The message came through the torture scenes at full force with little subtlety-it truly was not for the faint of heart.