Animal Farm
Theatre Royal
George Orwell’s bleak satirical novella has been dramatized on stage and screen many times, but never before with puppets. We have a peculiar attitude to the skill of puppetry in this country, up until a few years ago such an idea would have seemed preposterous – laughable even. Since the extraordinary success of the National Theatre’s Warhorse, however, we’ve seen how magical and transformative the art form can be. Perhaps Warhorse acted as a catalyst in Robert Icke’s mind – it’s surely no coincidence that the thirty different animal puppets used in this production were designed by Toby Olié, the man that brought a horse to life. My abiding thought while watching the show was – why has no one thought of doing it this way before?
Something else that I thought might happen was a guessing game. With the animals voiced by actors such as Robert Glenister and Juliet Stevenson, I assumed I might be forever wondering who was playing who. However, such thoughts quickly disappeared - such was the immersive and absorbing nature of this production that Napoleon was simply a pig that talked, Boxer simply a horse that worked. A small, but significant, step the company took was to name check all the puppeteers and all the voice talent, but without specifying who did what. This was a truly ensemble play that showcased the considerable talents of all involved, while keeping at the forefront the narrative, and it’s underlying message. In blunt terms, the animals were the thing, and nothing should distract from that.
Icke’s adaptation kept fairly close to the source material – certainly to a greater extent than any other adaptation I’ve seen – with what amounted to no more than tinkering around the edges. Clover was a cow, rather than another horse, Farmer Jones was a bully rather than a drunk, and some of the minor characters (most notably the chickens) were fleshed out. Those chickens, providing the occasional welcome chuckle, served to highlight how Orwell’s book is otherwise unremittingly grim, and this production boldly opted to take some of its toughest scenes head on. Both the banishment of Snowball, and the tragic demise of Boxer, were very well staged, but it was the relentless executions, murders, and deaths signalled by surtitle that really hit home. Airbrushed out of my memory of the book by sanitised adaptations, I had simply forgotten the carnage that takes place.
If I have a reservation – and it’s a minor one – I was less convinced by the decision to introduce miniatures at various points in the show. We saw Boxer ploughing a field, the dogs give chase to Snowball, and the invading farmers driving round outbuildings. In of themselves, these scenes were competently executed, and I imagine were included to provide contrast to the intimate drama. For me, however, they were a distancing device, reminding us that this was a clever production, and that we were watching puppets. This was, after all, theatre not cinema – I don’t need the panoramic view of snowball running to know he was being chased. I’d far rather have stayed with the creature on stage that I had entirely accepted as a living, breathing individual.
Otherwise, and beyond the genius of puppet design, there was so much more to admire in this production. The brutalism of Bunny Christie’s set design provided the perfect backdrop to the harsh reality of regime change, while the driving pulse of Tom Gibbon’s occasionally ear-busting sound dismissed all thoughts of a cosy bucolic drama. Best of all, was the superb pace throughout. A running time of ninety minutes without a break is usually a daunting prospect at the theatre, but this production seemed to fly by, with scene after scene that was both exciting to watch, and dramatically relevant.
The production is, of course, tragically prescient at the moment, in a way that even the program notes didn’t have time to catch up with. Napoleon is a brutal, oppressive leader that, it turns out, hasn’t been confined to history. But while much of the play resonated with my memory of the book, its greater achievement was drawing out from its source material elements that I had forgotten. Chief amongst those was propagandist Squealer, spouting preposterous justification for the indefensible that the populace begrudgingly accept, rather than contemplate the horror that they have been fooled all along. Whatever side of the political divide, I think that’s something we can all agree is a timely and devastating message.
