Catalyst's '1984' Is Rewired for The 21st Century

Few actors can suffer on a stage with quite as much panache as Scott Fortier, who in Catalyst Theater's re-imagining of its own adaptation of "1984" elevates writhing to something worthy of Olympic judging.

His virtuosic spasms occur during the scene in which his character, dystopian rebel Winston Smith, is strapped to a chair and zapped with a gazillion volts of electricity. As Winston's torturer, the sadistic Party hack O'Brien (Ian LeValley), stands watch, Fortier's legs curl violently against invisible shackles, his eyes cross reflexively and his throat erupts in explosions of pain.

In playwright Christopher Gallu's efficient conversion of Orwell's cautionary novel, you're meant to feel the full, oppressive weight of a regime obsessed with eradicating dissent and recasting history in its own image. Guided by a clipped quality in Gallu's script, director Jim Petosa presents "1984" as a series of taut vignettes, on a set composed of swiveling opaque panels. The sterile effect succeeds in underlining the dehumanizing culture of Big Brother's Oceania, where to care for another being amounts to a betrayal of the state.

The achievement here results more from the discipline of the stagecraft than the magnetism of the theme. The power of the anti-totalitarian "1984" as a political metaphor feels a bit worn out. Yet Catalyst still manages to find ways -- particularly by adapting Orwell's media manipulation techniques for the digital age -- of giving the story a few sharp new teeth.

After several years of residency at tiny Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, Catalyst has moved to the more spacious and comfortable confines of the Atlas Performing Arts Center on H Street NE. The company chose to inaugurate this new phase of its life with a revival of its well-received 2004 world premiere of "1984" -- although the physical surroundings and alterations in staging do give the proceedings a patina of freshness.

Fortier is reprising his role as Winston, but much else about this incarnation is different, including the director -- Petosa takes over here from Gallu -- the set designer (James Kronzer) and the composer (Matthew M. Nielson). A key shift, too, comes in the crucial role of O'Brien, originally played with an accent on dour menace by the satisfying Ralph Cosham. In LeValley's equally valid interpretation, O'Brien is a touch-feely sadist who cradles the broken bodies of his victims in his arms, as if a caress were another acceptable tool in the manual of state-sponsored torture.

This "1984," in fact, feels both darker and lighter than the earlier version, which in the narrow, compact black-box space on Capitol Hill was a more natural, if one-dimensional, reflection of the claustrophobic impact of life in a repressive society. The first act chronicles Winston's witheringly dull life as a drone in a government records office, where the drudgery involves creating a historical reality based on the whims of the ruling party. (One week, the populace is whipped into a state of frenzied, patriotic fervor over a fake war with one neighbor; the next, it occurs over conflict with a completely different one.)

The 2004 production gave center stage to a quintessential Orwellian prop: the TV screen on which Big Brother's message is piped into every house and office in the land. Petosa propels us into the digital present -- iPhone-like devices are now sinister instruments for propaganda -- and he reverses perspective imaginatively. The all-seeing two-way "tele-screens" are now located somewhere out in the audience; the stage, courtesy of Michael D'Addario's projections, is now bathed in electronic light, as the words of the reductively bastardized Newspeak and computer-guided images flash across the set.

Big Brother -- voiced in the ominous basso of James Konicek -- is apparently still watching. Only now in HD.

The rigid office rhythms are made comically theatrical, through interludes of stylized choreography. As Winston falls in love with the clandestine revolutionary Julia (a finely composed Laura C. Harris), the scenes give way to more naturalistic ones. The piece no doubt would draw us in more seductively if the progression of Winston and Julia's affair were etched with more detail. Their romance feels a little perfunctory, and that emotional absence diminishes some of the force of the more dramatic second act, when Winston is in custody and faced with the horrific choice of being tortured further or betraying the person he cares about most.

Still, the climactic moment at which LeValley's O'Brien taunts Fortier's Winston with exposure to his most nightmarish terror brings this "1984" to just the right paranoid temperature. And Fortier's embodiment of a nice guy driven to the edge of madness helps reveal what it's like to fight for one's soul in a society that gives the soul no quarter.

1984, from the novel by George Orwell, adapted by Christopher Gallu. Directed by Jim Petosa. Costumes, Pei Lee; lighting, Andrew Cissna; sound, Matthew M. Nielson; technical director, Dan Olesky. With Ellen Young, Ashley Ivey, Andres Talero, Elizabeth H. Richards. About two hours. Through Oct. 5 at Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. Visit http://www.catalysttheater.com.