Big Brother is watching us! Theatregoers at the opening night of a week-long adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 at Richmond Theatre found themselves in the unrelenting gaze of surveillance cameras for 15 minutes before curtain-up. As we flicked through the programme, chatted to neighbours, scratched our ears or stared vacantly into space, every movement was

Big Brother is watching us! Theatregoers at the opening night of a week-long adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 at Richmond Theatre found themselves in the unrelenting gaze of surveillance cameras for 15 minutes before curtain-up.

Keith Allen, left, as O’Brien, tortures Winston (Mark Quartley) in the powerful and unsettling 1984 at Richmond Theatre

As we flicked through the programme, chatted to neighbours, scratched our ears or stared vacantly into space, every movement was picked up and transmitted to a giant unblinking eye on stage. An unsettling start to an uneasy play.

Ryan Craig’s adaptation of the sinister future world has been given added meaning by the US election outcome. The beleaguered occupants of Orwell’s dystopian world spout slogans by rote. Make America Great Again?

Mark Quartley heads the cast as Winston, Keith Allen is the controlling O’Brien, Eleanor Wyld is Julia and David Birrell is Parsons; powerful performances from all in this alarming, upsetting drama spanning Thought Police and, of course, Room 101; the sinister repository of our greatest personal fears. Lindsay Posner directs.

Eleanor Wyld and Mark Quartley in 1984

A Theatre Royal Bath production until Saturday November 16.

www.atgtickets.com/richmond