UNLIKE many famous drawing-room socialists of the 1930s and 40s who, even after visiting Russia, turned a blind eye to Joseph Stalin’s excesses and brutality, quite happy to sacrifice the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen in order to maintain his position of absolute power, George Orwell was quite willing to point an accusing finger at the Russian dictator. You would have to be even blinder than those mid 20th century socialists not to recognise Stalin in the character of the President of Animal Farm, Napoleon Pig.
Sadly, nearly 80 years after Orwell sounded his warnings about totalitarianism, there appear to be more dictators in charge of countries than there were in 1945. I wonder what he would make of the present Russian head-of-state Vladimir Putin. One person who is defiantly unafraid to re-ring those warning bells is actor Guy Masterson, who has adapted Orwell’s novella for presentation as a one-person show.
Bare footed, dressed in a boiler suit, with just a couple of hats to help change character and a small box centre stage to change his height, Masterson brings the novella’s full range of characters to life. The megalomaniac Napoleon Pig and his evil side-kick Squealer, (shades of Adolf Hitler’s head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels), over a two-hour period, change from idealistic politicians to rulers corrupted absolutely by absolute power. The bleating Sheep, who like the ill-informed proletariat blindly follow their leader, and the tragic, unquestioning work-horse Boxer, thrown on the scrap heap when his willing strength gives out, are all on view.
Perhaps a little unfairly, Masterson uses recorded snippets of recent and present day politicians, taken out of context to support his view that we have not come far in our political thinking since Animal Farm was written, and as a result are even more vulnerable to a totalitarian regime than we were then.
Whatever your personal views on these matters, you have to admit that, presented powerfully by a master craftsman, they still have a sinister, rather frightening message to convey. You can also argue that, with Masterson’s great command of the vocal aspects of presenting the many characters who inhabit Animal Farm, this distinctive adaptation of Orwell’s classic might have been even more effective as a radio play.
Be that as it may, it takes a courageous and skilled practitioner to attempt to retain the attention of an audience single-handed, with only a handful of sound and lighting effects to help. In Guy Masterson you have an actor who possesses those qualities.
He will be back in Bath at Christmas to demonstrate those skills again with his solo adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
GRP