OH. MY. GOD. That's the closest I've come to losing my grip on reality in the theater. It was too agitating for David, but I loved it.

Want to hear more!!!

Oh so want to go!

TELL. ME. MORE.

Okay. I'll try to describe. It's not a straight retelling of 1984. It is more like snippets of Winston Smith's memory remembering what happened. Scenes were cut short with a blackout, a flash of strobe lights in your eyes and a loud electrical shock that's sort of like you're being electrocuted. You could also describe this as Winston's brain being rewired after his torture. Some scenes were played multiple times with slight variations to highlight that you couldn't trust whether this happened before or not. So you slowly become more and more confused and agitated. They still tell the story of Winston falling in love and them finding a place with no monitors to have their affair. That set takes place off stage somewhere. You're actually watching a video projection all across the top of the stage. There's no way of knowing whether those scenes were prerecorded or if they are being played live. So now imagine that you understand the story, but you keep having these electro shocks going off and it's loud and jarring. I see why people got nauseated. The strobe lights and loud sound make you a little dizzy.

Then...in one of the scenes where they're offstage in their secret room, you here the voice over the monitors for them to remain where they are. They have been caught. The police will be there any minute. The set starts to disassemble in front of you. It turns out the secret room they went to was behind the main set - we just couldn't see it. But eventually, their room is disassembled as well. The videos are now showing test patterns, static, chaos, you're seeing the printout of the government tracing their identities and deleting them. There are storm troopers with very frightening masks that show up in the video and on stage to beat the main characters and carry them away screaming. It was total chaos and madness. Along with very impressive sound effects that made you feel as if the floor was dropping out from under you.

There's a couple of short scenes of WInston in prison with a bag over his head. But eventually, we know we have to arrive in Room 101 - The place where there is no darkness. The stage is totally barren as the set is still disassembled. When the guards come to take him to Room 101, he's screaming and dragging. Eventually, they let him go. Three giant white walls slowly descend down while there's a fantastic ascension of noise until the walls land. There's nothing on the stage except for Winston, some guards, and his torturer. No doors. No windows. Just white walls. It was epic.

Everyone was a consummate actor. Olivia Wilde in particular as Sylvia was so fantastic.

And the guy playing Winston played him so average. Like some guy you knew in high school with no great aspirations to anything, but felt that something should be done.

Even though it was so unpleasant to watch (the torture scenes were brutal), I kind of want to see it again to see those two scenes I mentioned above: where they get caught and when they take him to Room 101. I've never felt so unhinged and so trapped in a production as I did.

Kathy, come to NYC! See this show!

His acting during the torture scenes was so dead on. He had so many specific moments. You know they're coming to break his teeth. They announce it. They do it all onstage. His howls were unreal. He was very specific about what he was experiencing - it wasn't just generic pain and agony. In his screams you could hear him thinking "Oh my god, that hurt so much more than I thought it would." He's a bloody incoherent mess by the end of the torture. He seems totally spent - sobbing and bloody. He thinks he's done but that he held on to one small piece of himself by not betraying Julia. Then they bring out the rat cage and he absolutely loses it. He sobers up. No more sobbing. He knows he can't face what's coming. They've beaten him and all he's trying to do is get out of it. He will do absolutely anything to escape that moment. He begs with them "You can't do this to me. You just can't. I can't bear it." - with a stone cold desperation that was awful to watch. He was completely dehumanized. And you realized that you would face all those moments exactly as he had. There was nothing staged about his reactions.

Okay. I'm looking for tickets to see it again now.