1984

Big Brother is watching you.

The Thought Police monitor every word you say.  Children spy on their parents and the Party has abolished the truth.

In the controlled world of Oceania, Winston and Julia begin a love affair which catapults them into rebellion against the Party.   The is the story of their epic battle to be human in a world where 'human' has no relevance or value.   

George Orwell's terrifying post-truth world of 'alternative facts' is more relevant today than ever before.

But the play begins with Orwell going into a hospital for tuberculosis patients on Christmas Eve 1947, having writen a first draft of his final novel.   Orwell fought for the left-wing Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War and his doctor - it turns out - fought for the right-wing Fascist forces...  

The play opened at the Citizens Theatre Glasgow on 29 August 2026.

The play was directed by Dominic Hill, designed by Tom Piper, and lit by Lizzie Powell.   The composer was Nikola Kodjabashia with Phineas de Thornley Head as Associate Electronic Composer.   Mark Melville was Sound Designer.  The cast was Irene Allan (Mrs Syme, Mother, Nurse Rankine and Ensemble);  Neshla Caplan ( De Souza, Thought Policewoman and Ensemble);  Peter Collins (Parsons, Charrington and Ensemble); Jessica Hardwick  (Julia and Middle-class Woman with Yacht);  Robert Jack (Syme, Dr Dick, and Ensemble);  Irene MacDougall (O'Brien);  Zrey Sholapurkar (Thought Policeman, Prole, Torturer and Ensemble);  and Jack Tarlton (Orwell and Winston Smith).  

Author Comment

Without doubt, the Spanish Civil War was the experience out of which Nineteen Eighty-Four was born.  Orwell did not learn about totalitarianism out of books, he learned about it when he went to fight in Spain for the left-wing International Brigades.   The communists he fought alongside were financed by the Soviet Union and they liquidated anyone who disagreed with them, including fellow left-wingers; especially fellow left-wingers.  

The left alliance was divided on a tactical issue: win the war first then the revolution or win the revolution first then the war.  Orwell and the men in his anarchist regiment believed the latter, the communist party believed the former; and disagreement was not polite.  On the streets of Barcelona, Orwell saw a communist poster where the face of an anarchist was pulled off like a mask to reveal a fascist underneath, his first experience of totalitarian propaganda, and the propaganda foreshadowed liquidation.  

Many of the men Orwell fought with were purged – hunted down, imprisoned and killed by the communists.  They came to get Orwell when he was staying in a hotel In Barcelona but by pure luck he was out.   His wife was there - but the communists left her alone - and the couple fled to England that week.  

For Orwell, the Spanish Civil War was an encounter with ruthless totalitarian murder and also an immersive post-truth experience.  When newspapers reported the Spanish war, they did so with a complete disregard for facts.  History stopped and fiction took over.  Orwell says:

‘I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.  I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed…I saw in fact history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines.’ 

In the Spanish war, Orwell  experienced organized lying, the creation and faking of truth, the threat of personal liquidation, and the annihilation of history and objective truth.  That is what Nineteen Eighty-Four is about and that is why it speaks to us today.