Ever since 1945, when George Orwell published his anthropomorphised farmyard allegory of the Russian revolution and Soviet slide into totalitarianism, it has felt newly relevant in whichever era it is revived, not least our own of contested truths and lies. But it speaks especially loudly in a week when Vladimir Putin risks being confirmed as Russia’s latter-day Napoleon – the pugnacious boar and autocratic leader of Animal Farm.
Robert Icke adapts and directs this startlingly handsome production, its story enacted mostly through puppets designed by Toby Olié of War Horse fame. There are fluttering pigeons, squabbling hens, muscular horses, characterful geese and of course the thuggish pigs, Napoleon, Snowball and Squealer, who come to be the “more equal” animals on the farm, and who have big, sinister faces.
Several puppets are delightfully oversized but with miniature doubles, such as the heroic cart-horse Boxer, who is formidable in his main incarnation, manipulated by three puppeteers, while there is also a dinky, scaled-down version of him that occasionally enters the action to beguiling effect.
Puppeteers (14 in total) crouch or wrap themselves around these animals with incredible nimbleness, while the animals’ words are voiced by 10 actors including Juliet Stevenson and Robert Glenister. The only human character on stage is Farmer Jones (Jonathan Dryden Taylor), who is not the careless drunk of Orwell’s book but a crueller caricature.
There are some breathtaking scenes of puppets giving chase, and of two central battles between animals and humans, and a particularly magnificent moment when Boxer bursts out of the barn to defeat the farmers.
The stagecraft also contains plenty of thrills and spills: there is a beautifully orchestrated blackness across Bunny Christie’s almost empty set, which captures the danger and darkness on the farm. Its corrugated iron panels, meanwhile, hint at a rusting dystopia. The black-and-white palette – the white of the animals against the black of the set – brings noirish visual melodrama and the sound design (by Tom Gibbons) adds to it, with its vigorously thumping bass and arch orchestral accompaniments. Together with the lighting design (by Jon Clark), it contains flecks of kabuki – tightly focused movements to the beat of a drum-like note – and high-octane, Indiana Jones-style action adventure. It excels at staging a welter of violence without resorting to any visible blood and gore.
But for all these phenomenal achievements, there is not always a palpable sense of fear or menace on the farm, and maybe not enough character development. Napoleon (inspired by Stalin) is a gruff character but never becomes truly frightening, and where the book gives these animals inner lives and personalities, here those are briefly gestured at, sometimes in broad-brush ways.
There are attempts to draw us closer but the failings show just how tricky a story this is to stage. There is an emotional flatness and the focus is on action – making it more amenable to a young audience, although the violence may be too adult.
Napoleon’s ruthless betrayal of Boxer is not as tragic as it should be, partly because the latter’s story does not feel individuated or intimate enough. We do not really see him for the heart-wrenchingly loyal comrade he is, accepting Napoleon’s ideology without question. Here he is simply a hard-working presence, and his final scene is not given enough space and does not tug at our heartstrings.
But what the production does not bring in its emotional effects it makes up for in exhilarating spectacle, imagination, energy, and the absolute glory of its puppetry.
• At Theatre Royal, Bath, from 1 to 5 March. Then touring.
