Animal Farm
Adapted by Van Badham
Black Swan State Theatre Company
Heath Ledger Theatre, State Theatre Centre of WA
George Orwell’s Animal Farm (first published in 1945) is a satirical novel about the Russian Revolution that uses animals to represent specific social-historical classes and individuals. Orwell himself was a democratic socialist, and this perspective sharpens his critique of Bolshevism, which he saw as a total betrayal of everything socialism stood for. The human characters in the novel represent the pre-Revolutionary aristocracy and bourgeoisie, with Farmer Jones standing in for Tsar Nicholas, and the neighbouring farmers representing the other ruling and owning classes abroad. Pigs represent the Bolshevik vanguard (with Old Major as Lenin, Snowball as Trotsky and the villainous Napoleon as Stalin), and other animals such as horses, donkeys, sheep, cows, chickens, crows, cats and dogs represent the agrarian, industrial and other workers who are exploited, oppressed and manipulated by their feudal and capitalist overlords. In a particularly sinister transposition, dogs become the police employed both by the despotic Tsarist regime and by the totalitarian Bolshevik one that follows it.
Orwell’s fable extends beyond the Russian Revolution to criticise the totalitarian impulse throughout history, whether this is manifested on the left or the right. The characters in Animal Farm have a universality as social-psychological types which speaks to us no matter who or where we are. Moreover, Orwell’s literary skill gives them a three-dimensional individuality that makes us believe in them, fear them, care about them, and even identify with them. We know or can imagine what it’s like to be dominated by pigs or terrorised by dogs; to be exploited and oppressed like the patient and obedient workhorse Boxer; to be led and manipulated like sheep; or even (if we are honest) to be tempted or corrupted by power or the allure of material possessions. One way or another, for better or worse, we are all animals deep down.
Van Badham’s contemporary stage adaptation extends itself horizontally rather than vertically, so to speak, to address contemporary struggles for social and racial justice, animal rights and environmental sustainability, as well as the populism of Donald Trump and the distortion of truth by politicians which is amplified by mainstream and social media. Unfortunately this broad-brushstroke approach fails to convey either the specific or the general thrust of Orwell's original critique. The result is artistically as well as politically incoherent, and squanders Orwell’s legacy as a writer, journalist and critic, a legacy which is still relevant today if we listen to what he has to say. The quality of the writing also falls far short of Orwell’s in terms of craft, humour or insight. Perhaps inevitably this failure extends to the production, including the design, direction and even the performances, despite the best efforts of all three actors, who play multiple roles.
The set consists primarily of a vast screen that descends from just behind the proscenium, onto which satirical comedy sketches are projected representing mainstream and social media coverage and commentary on the animal revolution as it unfolds. The content mimics typical TV or online footage and is (correspondingly) crudely shot and edited; it’s also (for the most part) painfully unfunny, despite the actors’ comic skills. This screen dominates the stage and is dark for about 50% of the show. In other words, there’s a lot of dead space, which extends upstage, as most of the area beyond the screen is visibly empty and unused. The actors have to avail themselves of a small area in front of the screen, including a low metal balcony which is accessible from the wings and leads to the forestage via a set of stairs. Beyond the screen, rows of metal barriers are visible that could represent empty animal pens. The floor, walls, balcony, stairs and barriers are all painted black, and the overall ambience is one of coldness and gloom, which kills off any sign of life or attempt at comedy on the part of the text or the performers.
This sense of lifelessness is no way the fault of the valiant and talented trio of actors, who appear in various guises for what are mostly brief vignettes or overlong expositional monologues. These are delivered with great energy and comic timing but mostly fall flat because of the clumsy writing and staging. There is also a lack of depth to the performances which can likewise be attributed to the slipshod nature of the adaptation and production. British accents are used for some of the characters, such as Old Major and the neighbouring farmers, perhaps as a nod to the original novella or as some kind of reference to Brexit (though neither Old Major nor Jones and his fellow property-owners seem like Brexiteers); whatever the reason, the effect is inconsistent and confusing, as the rest of the show seems to be set in a dystopian version of Australia, apart from the Trump-like portrayal of Napoleon. As for the representation of the animals themselves, despite the addition of strap-on animal noses, ears and tails, and the sporadic mimicking of animal sounds or movements as if they were some kind of involuntary vocal or physical tics, there is no real sense of embodiment or transformation from human to animal. The overall result is a kind of pantomime which hardly does justice to Orwell or the characters.
Whether considered as representatives of historical classes and individuals, social-psychological types or three-dimensional characters, Orwell’s animals (like Aesop’s, La Fontaine’s or Kafka’s) are fundamentally versions of human beings. This deliberate anthropomorphism has the simultaneous effect of humanising them (and thus enabling us to empathise with them) and of rendering visible what is animalistic in our own nature, and thus giving us an estranged, almost Brechtian perspective on ourselves.
However, the adaptation falls short of this level of critical anthropomorphism because it lacks both the humanity and the animality to embrace it. Instead it parodies the animals and their ‘animalist’ revolution. In doing so it mocks all struggles for justice and trivialises the forces of authoritarianism, populism, capitalism, racism, sexism, able-ism and species-ism they are struggling against. This trivialisation is epitomised when a video segment plays out on the screen featuring the actors dressed as chickens and advocating for their right to lay eggs in freedom while the slogan #chickenlivesmatter flashes beneath them. Some people in the audience laughed, but I found it utterly insensitive to Black lives, and cringed to imagine how any person of colour watching it might feel.
The emblematic misjudgement of the entire show is the clownish impersonation of Trump (dressed in Napoleonic drag) as the Stalinist pig dictator Napoleon. Trump is no Stalin, and the analogy between Trumpism and Stalinism (or for that matter between Bolshevism and contemporary left-wing or right-wing populist movements) is an entirely false equivalence. Orwell’s Napoleon is a penetrating portrayal of the authoritarian personality (and could perhaps with some adjustments be adapted to fit Putin or Xi Jinping); but Stalinism is an inaccurate characterisation of the demagoguery that currently passes for leadership in so-called liberal democracies. Perhaps a strutting, preening, red-faced, racist, sexist, xenophobic, nationalist turkey would be closer to the mark. However, that would require a much more radical rewriting of Animal Farm, one that departed further from the letter of the original while remaining truer to its spirit. In fact, it would require nothing less than a brand new play.
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Animal Farm is at the Heath Ledger Theatre until October 24.
