Press article written by the  2° Euro students

On Friday, the 21^th of January our class attended a show by the company “théatre en anglais”. The play is an adaptation of the famous novella written by George Orwell entitled Animal farm that we had studied in class.

First, Old Major an old boar calls a meeting in order to deliver a speech to push animals to a rebellion against humans, who are responsible for their misery and their laborious work. Old Major believes in a utopian society.  The preparation of the rebellion is done under the leadership of  3 pigs, Napoleon , Snowball and Squealer.

At the beginning of the rising action, Napoleon and Snowball invent a complex system of thoughts called “Animalism” reduced to seven commandments. The revolution is a success and the animals chase farmer Jones out of Manor Farm. Then, two pigs Napoleon and Snowball organize meetings,  increasing their control over the animals. Thus, Napoleon takes away the nine puppies to turn them into his bodyguards. Finally, there is a clash between Snowball and Napoleon about the windmill. Consequently, Snowball is banished from the farm by Napoleon. 

After the last battle, the animals are short on food while they’re striving building the windmill. Napoleon is trading with humans and then the pigs move into the farmhouse, which is strictly forbidden by the commandments. Snowball is blamed by Napoleon for destroying the windmill, he’s sentenced to death and there is a rebellion from the hens against Napoleon. Napoleon makes them confess to treachery, thus behaving more and more like a tyrant.

As Napoleon becomes more and more tyrannical, he changes the commandments, for instance “All animals are equal” to “Some animals are more equal than others”. Boxer, the faithful hard-working horse, is slaughtered and Napoleon declared himself president, granting himself privileges like sleeping in a bed, drinking alcohol or trading with humans until  the audience won’t make any differences between the pigs and the humans.

Our opinion on the staging: basic but very effective! The installations are incredibly simple. The same iron bars are used to materialize the various  places and for the  weapons in the battles; the company uses a reduced number of props and accessories: for example, they use pillows for the hens and for the dead sheep, some wood boards for the seven commandments and these same wood boards are also used for the beds in the beginning of the show.

Incredible actors! What is striking is that each actor plays more than one role. They don’t have any costumes except hats for human roles but with few technical means, they could make the audience understand which animal role they’re playing as they beautifully use body language such as being on all fours, swinging their armsand also intonations, voice imitations and animal cries so that the audience could figure out the pigs, the cow, the horses and even the hens on stage. Besides, the actors who used songs to convey messages told us what Orwell through the parallel he drew with the Russian revolution wanted to warn us about: totalitarian governments aren’t the solution to fight against misery and pain and freedom of thought is the key to fight against corrupt governments and dictatorships. It’s a great moral which remains true even today…It has been such an enriching theatre play for our own culture! We were glad to see we could understand most of it !!!