Shake and Stir’s stage production of 1984, now touring nationally, offers plenty for audiences to chew over, particularly the high-school audience the work is aimed at.

For those already familiar with or studying the text, it adds a useful, engaging point of reference for digging into its ideas of doublethink, thoughtcrime and the mechanisms of totalitarianism.

But the show finds itself hamstrung by the nature of the source material itself. The dramatic, human elements of George Orwell’s classic novel are a thin veneer over some big and dense socio-political concepts. There’s just not that much drama to work with on stage, and too much theory to really cover.

As a work in its own right, then, this version of 1984 is a solid addition to the novel, but not a substitute.

Shake & Stir’s 1984. Photo supplied

Adapted by Nelle Lee and Nick Skubij, and directed by Michael Futcher, the play makes some interesting (and generally successful) choices in putting the work on stage. Clever and inventive use of cameras and a video screen – Big Brother is always watching – breathe life into Orwell’s ideas about the surveillance state, the panopticon,...