In June 1949 Nineteen
Eighty-Four was published to critical and popular acclaim and yet its
author was seriously ill and was to die of tuberculosis in January 1950. Three
months before he had married Sonia Brownell, a 30
year old assistant magazine editor, 16 years his junior and very much in love
with another man, the unfortunately very married, French philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty.
The story of George Orwell’s
second marriage is a strange one… a marriage of convenience for both the author
and his wife or something deeper?
Tony Cox’s Mrs Orwell sets out
to find out just what it was that drew the two together and is buoyed by a
superb performance from Peter Hamilton Dyer as Mr Eric Arthur Blair the
man who really was Orwell. Dyer gives an uncomfortably-believable bed-ridden
turn as the tuberculotic man grateful for every breath and wincing with every
exhalation. In the close confines of a packed-out Old Red Lion Theatre – the run is
deservedly sold out – he held us rapt throughout.
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| Peter Hamilton Dyer and Cressida Bonas |
Cox’s dialogue intersperses some Orwellian quotes – including his thoughts on the correct
way to make tea – and communicates the mind-set of a man being dragged down
before his time, a man still with three good books to give and yet being worn away by unrelenting illness. This man who survived schooling at
Eton to live rough in Paris, London and Wigan and to fight against Fascists in
the Spanish Civil War, captain in the Home Guard and write some of the most iconic
literature of the last century.
There’s bitter brilliance at
play and George is unbending in his final days.
Orwell had known Miss Brownell
(the well-cast and very impressive Cressida Bonas) as she worked as the
assistant to Cyril Connolly, a friend of his from Eton College, at the literary
magazine Horizon. A skilled editor
and well-educated daughter of a colonial official, some have suggested that she
may have been the inspiration for Julia, the heroine of Nineteen Eighty-Four,
the "girl from the fiction department" who brings love and warmth to
the middle-aged hero, Winston Smith.
The play doesn’t follow this line and I was impressed by
the fact that the narrative didn’t attempt to be too specific about the
feelings and motivations: all we can know is what happened and the why is open
to interpretation.
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| Author and artist |
Sonia is pretty enough that men just visit the Horizon
offices for the hope of a glance whilst she is certainly out of ailing Orwell’s
league under normal circumstances. George is in no condition to offer her
anything other than companionship and she finds more physical comfort in the arms
of Lucian Freud, here constructed with playful menace by Edmund Digby Jones.
His Freud offers an interesting counter-point to Orwell – “I’m a German Jew, I’ve
no need of self-abasement” he dryly responds after another Orwell rant about the
privilege he denied himself. There are also a few in-jokes and plenty of
references to Lucian’s love of a good fight.
As Freud draws a portrait aimed at conveying both men’s
states of mind, Orwell’s publisher Fred Warburg (Robert Stocks) buzzes around
with potential deals, a cartoon film with MGM for Animal Farm and an American
edition of 1984 with the “newspeak”
edited out… “fake news” it’s always been a preoccupation over there.
At first Sonia is repulsed by Orwell’s offer –
recognising that what he wants is a combination of a
mistress, housekeeper, nurse, literary executor and mother for his young son Richard,
and yet… she eventually agrees
and the two are married in Orwell’s hospital room at University College
Hospital. His spirits start to lift and there is talk of completing the 48
hours trek to his beloved Jura and then a move to a sanitorium in Switzerland.
But these futures are even less compatible with Sonia’s desires than the
prospect of physical romance.
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| Peter Hamilton Dyer, Rosie Ede and Robert Stocks |
Marry in haste and repent at leisure. But Sonia inherited
a responsibility as well as wealth and she spent most of the latter in
protecting the former in the end.
Mrs Orwell is thought-provoking and immersive theatre reminding you
of George Orwell’s brilliance and the dramatic era he wrote through. It will
also leave you thinking about Sonia Brownell and the help she gave and
continued to give post-mortem even at cost to herself.
Presented by the Proud Haddock
company, Mrs Orwell plays at the Old
Red Lion until 26th August and you may just be able to grab a return
or too if you keep an eye on the box office.
All pictures courtesy of Samuel Taylor.
Ithankyou Rating ****
"...the girl from
the fiction department... was looking at him... She was very young, he thought,
she still expected something from life... She would not accept it as a law of
nature that the individual is always defeated... All you needed was luck and
cunning and boldness. She did not understand that there was no such thing as
happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead." George Orwell, 1984
