Dating George Orwell is a one woman play that looks at the unhealthy relationship between a teenage girl and the books that she has become engrossed in.
The concept and character created by Kelly Jones has some comic substance to it. However there are a couple of issues with the performance. Whilst the concept of a girl having a relationship with a book is a funny one, too often she relied on the fact that licking a book passionately was funny enough on its own. Furthermore there was little subtlety to the performance; rather than letting the audience make the more graphic leaps about her relationship with the books she acted them out on stage. This led to several awkward moments where the majority of the audience simply didn’t know where to look. The tone of the play veered wildly between parody and real life issues without ever really settling on either. This made the more farcical parts of the show seem more out of place. Dating George Orwell had its funny moments but the problem was that the jokes were often too meandering and the punch lines only came after a long period of awkwardness.
Dating George Orwell has the bare bones of a good show but the wrong aspects are highlighted in this production and rather than making the audience laugh it made them cringe.
