An exciting theatrical homage to the 20th century author George Orwell in a programme of readings & discussions. Feat. excerpts from Nineteen Eighty-Four, & performances of his essays Shooting An Elephant & A Hanging. 8 June – 4 July. Hal Cruttenden reprises his unmissable performance as George Bowling, the henpecked insurance-man, married with kids, saddled with a mortgage and who flees the suburbs for the countryside of his childhood, on the eve of World War Two. Coming Up for Air displays Orwell’s great gift for comic writing and grasp of middle class anxieties at a time of political and economic crisis. The evening also features Ben Porter playing lone hero Winston Smith in a chilling distillation of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Ministry of Love interrogation scene. Plus, performances of Orwell’s essays: Shooting an Elephant and A Hanging. With an additional complementary strand of talks and debates, and all profits going to the human rights group Liberty and the Orwell Prize, the stage is set is for an unprecedented celebration marking the 60th and 70th anniversaries of the publications of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Coming Up for Air.

Dates and Times:
8 June – 4 July 2009
Monday – Saturday at 7.45pm
Thursday & Saturday at 2.45pm

“Funny and poignant, it feels as fresh and true as if written this year.’ - Sunday Telegraph

“Cavendish's elisions leave the story remarkably intact and his faithfulness to Orwell, and Cruttenden's perceptive characterisation, puts the novel in a fresh light. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm may occupy the higher intellectual ground but, at least when portrayed so truthfully as in Gene David Kirk's unobtrusive production, Coming up for Air reveals an emotional heart” - The Independent

‘Elegantly adapted from Orwell’s 1939 novel. It features a pitch-perfect performance from Hal Cruttenden' - Sunday Times

“Dominic Cavendish's adaptation has classy, understated prose, elegant pruning and shaping, plus a performance from Hal Cruttenden that is perfectly judged. Cruttenden doesn't so much play glumly respectable middle-aged, middle-income insurance salesman George Bowling as inhabit him… intelligent and surprisingly moving” - The Guardian

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COMPETITION: 1x Pair of tickets to attend ‘George Orwell: A Celebration’ at the Trafalgar Studios at 19:45 on Mon, 8th June.

To claim your tickets, send an email with the correct answer in the ‘subject’ box. The winner will be randomly selected.

Q: The Special Branch in the UK, the police intelligence group, maintained a file on Orwell more than twenty years of his life. The dossier, published by Britain's National Archives, mentions that according to one investigator he had "advanced Communist views and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings". However, MI5, the intelligence department of the Home Office, developed the information to note that "It is evident from his recent writings — 'The Lion and the Unicorn' — and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium The Betrayal of the Left that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."

"The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius" is an essay by George Orwell expressing his opinions on the situation in wartime Britain. The title alludes to the heraldic supporters appearing in the full royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom.

With the introductory sentence "As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.", the content sheds some light on the process which eventually led Orwell to the writing of his famous dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It expressed his opinion that the outdated British class system was hampering the war effort, and that in order to defeat Hitler, Britain needed a socialist revolution. Therefore, Orwell argued, being a socialist and being a patriot were no longer antithetical, they became very much complementary[citation needed].

As a result, in Orwell's vision at the time, "The Lion and the Unicorn" would become the emblems of the revolution which would create a new kind of Socialism, a democratic "English Socialism" in contrast to the oppressing Soviet model - and also a new form of Britishness, a Socialist one liberated from Empire and the decadent old ruling classes. (Orwell specified that the revolutionary regime may keep on the royal family as a national symbol, though sweeping away all the rest of the British aristocracy).

When was this essay first published?

A: 1) 23 May 1912 .2) 13 April 1935 .3) 24 December 1939 .4) 19 January 1941

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