Review: In February 2025 I had the absolute privilege of going to see a new production of Animal Farm at Theatre Royal Stratford East. This stage production, adapted from the original text by Tatty Hennessey, brought to life in many imaginative ways the animals of Manor Farm.
It had been a few years since I read Orwell's perfect political satire so I returned to the text in preparation for my night at the theatre in my neighbourhood in London. The Bolshevik Revolution, Stalinism and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet regime eighty years later was the basis of my undergraduate studies in European history, however I didn't pick up Animal Farm until I was in my thirties and returned to a love of literature after years of mainly reading non-fiction history texts.
This novella remains one of the greatest short stories of all time. The way Orwell ingeniously tells a tale of animals rebelling against the tyranny of the human farmer Mr Jones before eventually betraying their ideals and descending into the same terrible treatment they ousted Jones for, has made the book the most perfect fable of Stalinism. Famously Orwell wrote the novel in response to what he felt to be the minimising of the true brutality of Stalinism by the western allies in order to maintain a political and military allegiance with the Soviet Union during World War Two. The anger Orwell feels about the betrayal of the ideologies of the Bolshevik Revolution is evident in the treatment of the Snowball character who is a clear stand-in for Trotsky. Other characters perfectly represent Lenin, Stalin, Soviet bureaucrats, victims of Stalin's great purge, and hardworking members of the Soviet society whose loyalty to the ideology was betrayed.
Never has there been a greater political satire of a more tragical political betrayal and this is why Animal Farm retains is status to this day and continues to be re-read, re-staged and even re-interpreted.
Title: Animal Farm
Author: George Orwell
Genre: Modern Classic (Political Satire)
ISBN: 978-0141036137
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: 17 August 1945
Publisher Description: 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges. . .First published in 1945, Animal Farm - the history of a revolution that went wrong - is George Orwell's brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power.