Every society has its pigs and bloodhounds, its workhorses and sheep. So George Orwell warned in Animal Farm, a sophisticated political parable that could almost be read to children at bedtime. They would recognize the bullies and their minions, the descent of unimaginative plodders, the mindless followers, even if they’d miss the allusions to Stalinism. The 1945 novel was a bitter satire of the Soviet illusion by a disappointed leftist, yet it has transcended its original context to become a universal allegory of oppression in the name of freedom and the danger of manipulating reality to serve a political agenda.
Animal Farm will come to life at the Quadracci Powerhouse this month. The Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s production, based on the adaptation by the Royal Lyceum Theatre’s Ian Wooldridge, will be directed by May Adrales. Nationally known in theater circles, she is also a familiar name to Rep ticketholders, having directed Yellowman and The Mountain Top in Milwaukee and joining the company this year as its associate artistic director. Adrales recounts that Artistic Director Mark Clements saw Wooldridge’s Animal Farm in Britain and asked her to take on the project for the Rep. “I immediately said ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ I’ve been hungry to do a classic and was eager to jump into this play, so relevant today on so many levels,” she says.
In Orwell’s story, the animals on a particular farm, awakened to the fact of their lives as “miserable, laborious and short,” aware that the fruits of their labor are stolen, rise up and chase out Farmer Jones. Their leaders, a pair of boars called Napoleon and Snowball, have embraced the ideology of Animalism with its prescription that “no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind” in the inevitable “golden future time” when the oppressed shall rule the world. The four-legged creatures seize their corner of the Earth but the promised Utopia evaporates soon enough into a system even crueler than the manmade regime they have overthrown.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
The Rep’s Animal Farm is cast for six actors, most of them playing dual roles, most of them animals. And although in Orwell’s novel Animalism is explicitly based on the ascendance of four-legged creatures, Adrales quickly states that the actors will walk on two legs throughout the production.
“We use a series of masks for each character,” she says, with those masks deployed in such a way that the actors’ faces are always exposed. Stephanie Weeks as Boxer, the kindly workhorse whose demise endows the novel with pathos, wears an equine mask on her chest as part of a costume designed to confine her to a steady trudge. Mollie (Tiffany Rachelle Stewart), who under Farmer Jones’ rule had been the pampered mare, carries her tail in one hand and her mask in the other, suggesting the flighty-tempered horse’s “fluidity of movement.” Snowball (Brendan Titley), Orwell’s parody of Leon Trotsky, has an unusually large head, given his propensity for sophistry. The brutal Napoleon (Melvin Abston), Orwell’s stand-in for Josef Stalin, wears a shield. The cast also includes the Rep’s associate artists Jonathan Gillard Daly and Deborah Staples.
Adrales calls Wooldridge’s adaptation “really smart—it allows for theatricality and gives room for creativity.” The masks tap “the power of heightened theatricality.” A few of Orwell’s minor characters are dispensed with and the dialogue is condensed; the core ideas are transliterated into performance. “Where the book paints the picture, this is being expressed through motion and music,” she adds. The motion is determined in part by Izumi Inaba’s costumes and the original music comes courtesy of Charles Coe and Nathan A. Roberts. Included is Orwell’s “L’Internationale” for the animals, the stirring “Beasts of England” in a fresh musical setting.
Perhaps the most dramatic shift from the novel involves Andrew Boyce’s scenic design. Orwell’s barnyard has been transformed into something darker and more contemporary.
“I was thinking about the living conditions that often precede revolutions—the squalor,” Adrales explains. “I examined what extreme poverty looks like for migrant workers in places like the United States and Dubai—the big industrial farms.” Her Animal Farm features forbidding tile walls and harsh fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
“The play gives great homage to the book,” she continues, “but we’re setting it as a fable, in a mythical time and space. We want to make it as universal as possible. We are asking the audience to translate the story into their own experience.”
The Milwaukee Rep’s production of Animal Farm runs Jan. 9-Feb. 11 in the Quadracci Powerhouse, 108 E. Wells St. For tickets, visit milwaukeerep.com or call 414-224-9490.
