Theatre Review: Immersive 1984

Greetings Comrades! Are you ready to begin your assessment?

This immersive reworking of Orwell's 1984 holds so much promise, but the production is so sparse that it ends up feeling a little underwhelming.

In theory, everything about this should work. It is set in Hackney Town Hall, an impressive venue for a play about the dangers of bureaucracy. On entering, we were each given an ID badge - red, green, or blue depending on which Ministry we'd been assigned to - and given strict instructions not to take them off. Liz and I were assigned to the Ministry of Truth. Intriguing! Would that affect our journey through the world?

No. They're strictly for crowd control.

We were told to arrive 30 minutes early for a bit of interactive pre-show. There were a few jackbooted thugs wandering around with clipboards, and some rather charming singers, but it didn't really add much. The constant background drone of "See it, say it, sorted" was rather effective at building up atmosphere.

There is a bar, but you can't take drinks with you throughout the show and there's no interval. You can't leave the show to use the loo. Even if you could, one of the gents was impressively blocked. These sorts of things matter. The pre-show is what builds the anticipation, it makes the audience excited, intrigued, and comfortable. People desperate for a wee aren't going to enjoy your performances.

We were suddenly launched into the two-minute hate, which was gorgeously performed. The use of lighting, the venue's lift, the audio, all served to increase the tension. It was starting to feel very special.

We were traipsed upstairs and into the council chamber. The people with red badges were directed to sit in a specific location. Which, as it turned out, meant nothing. It felt a bit lacklustre. There was huge potential to involve the audience, but in the end nothing differentiated our experiences. There was a little bit of audience-work, but nothing that made us feel involved in this world.

The upstairs session was like being given a masterclass in acting by Dominic Carter. He is superb as O'Brien, so calm and reasonable that it felt obvious that we should join The Party.

We were wandered back though a depressingly barren corridor. It would have taken so little effort to stick up some posters with "Big Brother Is Watching You" or something else to catch the eye. The "Stranger Things" show covers its walls with fake newspaper clippings, photos, and posters - I appreciate that show has a massive budget, but printing and blutak are pretty cheap. It would have given the audience something to latch on to and make them feel like they were immersed in the production.

There were no moments of "did you notice that?!" or "that's a clever bit of detail" or "I wonder what the other badges are doing?"

The rest of the action takes place back in the first room. I was expecting us to move about some more. Or have a bit more interaction. But we just sat and watched. Well, we tried to watch. We were sat at the back and literally couldn't see the stage. It's all projected up on the wall so rather felt like we were in the cheap seats of a concert.

The acting is outstanding, the whole ensemble works together well and everyone snatches little moments of magic. Neetika Knight in particular is a stand-out as Julia. She's funny, scary, carefree, and shocking.

It is a technically complex show, with the cast operating cameras and boom mics, the projection from the cameras is fast cut and the lighting is impressively cued. The sound design is haunting.

The applause at the end was a little muted. Not because the acting is bad or the show is a dud, but because I think we were all expecting a little more. And I think that's key to what's missing from the show. It needs more set dressing. More interaction. More immersion. More movement from the audience. More thought given to the pre- and post-show experience.

This is never going to be like the immersive Doctor Who show "Time Fracture" with people coming back repeatedly to experience different stories. But it could have at least tried to involve the audience more and given some more thought to how they experience the play.

If you think of it as a split location piece of theatre, it is a decent show. But as an immersive experience, it fell flat.