1984 at Steppenwolf Theatre

Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended

"...A good number of the high school students who come to see Steppenwolf Young Adults’ chilling, hard-hitting stage adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” were not even born when the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ushered in a whole new geopolitical era. And painfully few probably have any real understanding of the roots of Orwell’s classic work, which was first published in 1949, when the world was still grappling with both the full horror of the Nazis’ engineering of the Holocaust and the massive internal purges undertaken by the Soviet Union’s Josef Stalin."

Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended

"...But although White dutifully lays out Orwell’s arguments against totalitarianism and the control of language as a means of controlling thought, he fails to capture the book’s sense of outrage and nightmare urgency. The same could be said of the acting in Hallie Gordon’s staging for Steppenwolf for Young Adults. Showing few signs of fear or resistance, everybody seems defeated from the get-go."

Gapers Block - Highly Recommended

"...This slogan of the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue) in George Orwell's novel, 1984, sums up the themes of Newspeak, doublethink, censorship and repression that permeate his novel. Steppenwolf for Young Adults recreates this dystopian era and gives it a strong contemporary twist in its new staging of Orwell's 1949 novel. It's a provocative play and brought out some thoughtful questions from high-school-age audience members at the Saturday afternoon opening."

ChicagoCritic - Recommended

"...But as people who spend all day in school, they do understand how being surrounded by petty power-mongering and institutional incompetence hardens and exhausts a person. This adaptation also avoids the trap of last year's Animal Farm by not focusing on exposition at the expense of action, and Andrew Rovner's original music brilliantly upholds the balance of making the story more theatrical, while demonstrating Ingsoc's grip on society. Plus, the students probably will be assigned 1984 in literature class, so they're not missing anything, just getting an incentive to read."

Chicago Theatre Review - Recommended

"...This drama is a cautionary tale of science fiction that, even more than in films like “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent,” makes the horror of a dystopian society feel believably real and immediate. Big Brother is always watching, not only each of the characters, but the audience, as well. The inescapable terror of living under such a restrictive regime is grimly brought to life, and theatergoers will long be haunted by these characters and their moving story of defiance, long after the houselights return."