The enraged flick of Napoleon the megalomaniac pig’s ear. The tragic faint twinkle in the eye of Clover the downtrodden cow. The hunched drudging walk of Boxer, the oppressed workhorse.
The stage production of Orwell’s great novel, currently showing at the Theatre Royal, is a stunning, often brutal, transcendental experience befitting its original title of Animal Farm: A Fairy Story . Directed by Robert Icke, an extraordinary team of puppeteers, actors and designers from the Children’s Theatre Partnership (CTP) works exhaustively to bring the sinister darkness and maddening tragedy of Animal Farm to life before your eyes.
Working with four-time Olivier Award-winning set designer Bunny Christie - known perhaps to Nottingham theatre-goers from the hit 2017 showing of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - and with puppetry by Toby Olié, Icke and the cast bring the full power of Animal Farm to the stage in a way that younger audiences will be as gripped by as any Orwell-buff. It is not an easy experience. Scenes of on-stage violence in the battle between farm animals and humans, so intense they scream animal cruelty, had a girl sat in front of me burying her head in her father’s shoulder.
