Orwell's Animal Farm for the twenty-first century. (1st October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ue, Tom
• Is Part Of: Journal of adaptation in film & performance. Volume 11:Number 2(2018)
• Page Start: 217
• Page End: 225
• Publication Date: 2018-10-01
• Subjects: Film adaptations -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Motion pictures and literature -- Periodicals; 791.43605
• DOI: 10.1386/jafp.11.2.217_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-6421

Abstract

The start of George Orwell's Animal Farm: A Fairy Story (1945) finds an assembly of animals gathered to hear the strange dream that Old Major had the night before. The 12-year-old boar prefaces his narrative with a polemic against the miserable and toilsome lives that they are living in Manor Farm: 'No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth' (5). Orwell traces the resultant revolution, revealing some of its flaws while resisting a monocausal reading for its failure. In what follows, I discuss this play with its most recent adaptor, Toronto-based theatre artist Anthony MacMahon. We examine the novella's resonance in the twenty-first century, and analyse the adaptation's treatment of, and response to, Orwell.