Four women are arrested after protesting in Belfast and held inside a stark cell awaiting questioning. At first, they answer questions with Orwell’s words from Animal Farm, spoken from within the cell on stage. Very quickly, they begin to become the book itself.
Through physical performance, the women slip between human and animal. They crouch, circle, purr, moo, and submit. It becomes difficult to tell where the protesters end and the animals begin, and the production never tries to clarify that line. The acting out of animal behaviour is dark and unsettling, primal and raw.
The cell gradually becomes the farm. There are no scene changes, just two tables, chairs, and bodies reshaping the space. Chairs are used to build the windmill, a fragile structure formed again and again through repetition and effort. It’s a simple image, but a powerful one. Progress here feels exhausting, imposed, and easily undone.
Running through the production is a constant threat. If the animals don’t comply, the humans will return. That warning hangs over every movement and decision. Control is enforced not just through force, but through fear of something worse. Obedience is framed as survival. Propaganda is everywhere.
The tone is relentlessly sinister and oppressive. Authority is deceptive, calm and firm, built on lies and rules that subtly change. The animals fight to keep their farm, to hold onto land they already had access to before the revolution. Life is harder than before, and rather than bloodshed imposed by humans, violence is turned inward and inflicted on each other. Meanwhile the farm gets richer but the animals don’t.
Directed by Patrick J O’Reilly, the adaptation strips the story back to its core ideas and introduces an unexpected physicality. It makes the work feel immediate and recognisable. Movement and interaction are disturbing and deliberate throughout, delivered by a superb cast of four. There are moments you’ll smile, but they are quickly overtaken by the drama.
Presented by Tinderbox Theatre Company in association with The MAC, this is dark, focused, and unsettling theatre. It’s mesmerising and disturbing to watch. If Orwell’s animals are this recognisable, how distant are we really from the farm?
By the end, it leaves you with an urge to return to the book of Animal Farm itself. Not as a classic safely filed away, but as a book that still explains far too much about how power works and how it influences behaviour.
