George Orwell’s ‘1984’ Coming to Broadway
George Orwell’s 1984 will hit Broadway in June. The stage adaptation of the dystopian classic has had four successful runs in the U.K. so far and opened in Los Angeles in early 2016.
Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan created the play, which opened to rave reviews in London. Its limited engagement will appear at New York’s Hudson Theatre beginning June 2nd, with casting to be announced soon. 1984 will be the first production of the 2017-2018 Broadway season.
Set in the province of Airstrip One, which is mean to be a futuristic version of Great Britain, George Orwell explores a tyrannical government filled with surveillance and public manipulation. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the novel has seen a surge in sales given many pundits having compared the global rise of far-right political movements to the totalitarian state of Oceania in the book. It is currently Number One on the Amazon best-seller list.
The 1949 novel was adapted into a film in the year of its namesake with the recently deceased John Hurt playing the protagonist Winston Smith. Richard Burton and Suzanna Hamilton also appeared in the film, which was directed by Michael Radford. An earlier adaptation arrived in 1956.