1984 (Broadway) NYC Reviews and Tickets

“A nerve-jangling adaptation…Using a horror movie vocabulary, the virtuosic production makes the dark implications of out-of-control state power feel urgent and real…Anchoring the play is the romance between Winston and Julia, a rambunctiously vivid Olivia Wilde…The production still ends on a chilling note, one that’s both in keeping with the world Orwell creates while resolutely refusing to send the audience home with an adrenaline rush of hope.”
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"Stark, intense, and visually stunning...This un-society is marked, extremely effectively, by characters moving by suspicious rote and by the standout scenic design, lighting and sound effects of the production...What this adaptation does, and which no other adaptation has done until now, is take Orwell’s appendix of the original novel to pose a series of teasing questions about Smith to create an even more haunting denouement than Orwell’s original."
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“An inconsistent theatrical adaptation…A confusing framing story…The 101-minute intermissionless play features some very strong moments…But the narrative jumps around too much between the past, the present, and the future and strays too often from the central plot, creating confusion and annoyance. The story’s overall message gets buried in too much stylistic stagecraft. However, its relevance is still terrifyingly apparent”
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“This meta approach makes the production a bit of a slog at first, weighed down by the confusion over the setup and some overly repetitive scenes…The production really begins to kick into gear with the arrival of the great Reed Birney…The gripping final third of this ‘1984’ exploits all the modern possibilities in stagecraft…‘1984’ manages to pump new, discomforting life into the mother of all dystopias. Icke and MacMillan also hit on some home truths that feel all too pertinent.”
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“Sturridge mostly looks lost throughout this performance and displays none of the pained intelligence that John Hurt brought to the role…Icke and MacMillan’s frantic direction and over-reliance on the techniques of physical theatre seem out of sync with the torpid drudgery of life under totalitarianism. Only when they turn to the raw terror of the Thought Police does the dramatic potential of Orwell’s book come to the fore…If only the rest of this ‘1984’ were so disciplined.”
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“An assault on the senses, pointedly designed to run over an audience like a tank crushing resistors in its path…To some degree, the strobe lights, gunshots and gore become such a distraction from the story that they threaten to overwhelm its dire message about government run amok…Sturridge and Wilde are very good...I don’t routinely suggest it’s essential for theatergoers to know source material before seeing its adaptations. Here, though, it’s a good idea.”
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"One of the most fascinating items on the Broadway scene...It stands as a powerful and frighteningly relevant, if somewhat fantastical, take on our world...O’Brien, Julia, and Winston could not be in better hands. Reed Birney, Olivia Wilde, and Tom Sturridge play the three central roles impeccably...A multi-cultural epic that uses all its elements to great effect. This piece is hardly 'entertainment,' but it is engrossing, exciting, and interesting at all times. It is pure theatre all the way."
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“Icke and Macmillan’s production is structurally and visually daring. The audience is assaulted with piercing sound, blazing light and graphic violence. With live video and projections evoking Big Brother’s spying, the surveillance-themed design chills…The production presents a gripping untrustworthy, unstable environment. Though the discombobulation is intentional, sometimes the direction leaves us struggling to decode incidents in the play.”
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