Theatre in Review: Orwell in America (Northern Stage at 59E59)

	Jamie Horton, Jeanna De Waal. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Considering that he was such a stickler for the facts, it's fascinating that Orwell in America aims to get at the truth of its title character through an entirely fictional set of incidents. To be clear: George Orwell never visited America, certainly not on a book tour to promote Animal Farm. By the time his famed political fable was the talk of two continents, Orwell's health, which was never great, had gone into a tailspin, and a transatlantic trip, let alone a series of public talks, would have finished him off. For that matter, the actor Jamie Horton, who plays Orwell, has an improbably robust appearance for a man who at the time was wasting away from tuberculosis. Those who saw Orwell in the last two years of his life -- - he died in 1950 -- - often described him as resembling a living cadaver.

There's so much that's right with Horton's performance, which we'll get to in a minute, that in the end his healthy demeanor hardly seems to matter. Since the days of Shakespeare, playwrights have bent history to their own purposes and, in coming up with this central situation, Joe Sutton gets at an irony that bedeviled Orwell in his last years: Having struck a devastating blow against the reputation of the Soviet Union in Animal Farm, he found himself made into the official spokesperson for anti-totalitarianism. For the first time in his career, he was rewarded with big money and household-name status. But he also found himself allied with many whose political positions he found repellent. It must have been an exquisite form of torture; just as he attained the fame for which he had so long yearned, he found himself being widely misrepresented.

Orwell in America moves, rather uncertainly at times, between various hotel rooms, where the novelist rehearses his presentation, aided by Carlotta, the pretty, ambitious publishing company representative assigned to keep tabs on him, and his public appearances, where he finds himself struggling to explain the nuances of his political philosophy. Simply put: No American can understand how the man who penned such a devastating allegory on the theme of Russian Communism could possibly be a staunch supporter of socialism. Surely he must be a fellow traveler, a Soviet bear in sheep's clothing.

Carlotta, who sees the tour as a way of boosting her career, does her best to keep Orwell on an ideological leash, shunning controversy in favor of anodyne questions about where he gets his ideas. (Horton's rendering of Orwell's stunned response to such mindless queries as "How do you like Utica?" is one of the production's joys.) It's a thankless task, not helped by the fact that Orwell is thoroughly taken with Carlotta, even proposing marriage early on. His lumbering attempts at romance might seem like clumsy playwriting at first, but Sutton knows his subject: Orwell had a keen eye for the ladies, and was known for his inelegant lunges at them; furthermore, following the death of his first wife, Eileen O'Shaughnessy, he was permanently on the prowl for a replacement, although whether he wanted a soulmate or an administrative assistant is an open question.

The back-and-forth between the middle-aged literary lion and his youthful, calculating assistant provides for some lively exchanges. Carlotta is adept at steering Orwell away from political hot potatoes while fending off his amorous attentions. And yet, when recalling, with deep feeling, his experiences in the Spanish Civil War -- - one of many supposedly off-limits topics -- - he says, "So it was that men from all over the world came together and determined that we would safeguard that Republic, and march -- arm in arm -- into the future!" there comes the inevitable catcall from the audience: "Into a Communist future!" At times like these, Carlotta certainly isn't afraid to get tough with Orwell. Ticking off a list that includes Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon, and the Hollywood Ten, she says, "Surely you're aware of the moment we're in....And yet you're surprised, it seems -- - every time -- - when you get the reaction you do. What exactly do you expect?" It's a question for which he has no real answer.

Later, smitten with Carlotta and eager to please her, he brings her on stage to field audience questions, a move aimed at deflecting controversy that causes more trouble when she turns spokesperson for the audience, pressing Orwell to see that Stalinism and socialism are inextricably connected. He is infuriated by her evident betrayal, confronting her offstage, insisting, "We must control the message." Suddenly, one of the world's leading proponents of freedom of thought sounds like a tough-minded cultural commissar.

Most the time, however, Orwell in America is a sympathetic portrait of a fierce, fearless thinker caught in the political crosscurrents of his time, trying to be heard even as a gang of dubious characters tries to co-opt him for their causes. Sutton uses Orwell's constantly shifting relationship with Carlotta, which contains elements of both ideological and erotic struggle, to illustrate how hellishly difficult it is to be understood in this crazy world, even when one writes the most crystalline prose.

This isn't an in-depth portrait. Sutton allows Orwell to mourn his late wife without exploring the complexities of their marriage, which sometimes made her violently unhappy. He makes Orwell "cautiously optimistic" about the eventual defeat of the Soviet Union, when, at this point in his life, he couldn't have been gloomier. The play doesn't really delve into Orwell's bitter experiences in Barcelona, where infighting among the ranks permanently soured him on the Stalinist experiment. And it doesn't mention his fear -- - possibly paranoid, but rooted in his time in Spain, when such things did happen -- that he might be killed by a Soviet assassin.

But Sutton makes real drama out this imaginary episode that accurately evokes the conflicts that roiled Orwell's life in its final chapter. And in Horton, he has an actor magnificently equipped to bring Orwell to life; whether flirting, drinking, evading a too-pertinent question, or losing his composure over his late wife and adopted son, the actor gives us a man for whom ideas are a life-and-death matter. Speaking in a rich, reverberant voice, his exposition of Animal Farm's plot is stunning in its urgency, as is the intensity and elegance with which he argues that socialism is the last, best hope for a humane society. Horton also probes the ambivalence at the heart of this great contrarian, especially as he describes how, from the time he attended school as a "charity boy," his role as one of society's outsiders was set in stone. I'd love to see this fine actor in any number of contemporary and classic roles. Given a much-less-developed character, Jeanna de Waal is a genial enigma, keeping us guessing about Carlotta's motives and retaining a hold on our sympathies, even when she seems to be stringing him along for reasons of her own. Peter Hackett's direction maintains a baseline level of tension throughout.

The production is fairly simple in other respects. Caite Hevner's set design, a suggestion of an anonymous hotel room, has an upstage wall that, in the second act, is covered with Animal Farm's seven commandments ( Among them, "All animals are equal.") Stuart Duke's lighting smoothly guides the action from private to public scenes. Amy Sutton's costumes include some spot-on period suits for Carlotta and a collection of wools and tweeds for Orwell. Ben Montmagny's sound design creates the sense of Orwell's audiences, which are usually full of feisty questioners.

Actually, Orwell had one more triumph to go -- the publication of 1984 -- - which, if anything, surpassed the success of Animal Farm. But really, the ball game was over; what lay ahead was a long slow fade to death, punctuated only by his eleventh-hour marriage to Sonia Brownell, a woman so complicated that she deserves a play of her own. Orwell in America is a poignant reminder of the hazards of the writer's life: Even success can sour if one isn't being correctly heard. -- David Barbour