Chelsea Walker’s adaptation of the dual construct that is A Clockwork Orange, being half a morality tale by Anthony Burgess and half a film by Stanley Kubrick, is one that has set itself a very difficult task. On the one hand it has engage with Burgess’s profound meditation on the nature of free will and the weakness of the human condition; how, if given the chance, we may well choose ‘lashings of the ultraviolent’ or ‘the old in-out’; how desperately we need authority and yet how it will ultimately destroy us, ‘when a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.’ The novel questions whether morality is a restricting of our brutish desires by the fear of punishment by the state or whether it can be something more profound: located elsewhere. On the other hand it must engage with one of the most visually stunning, or perhaps shocking, pieces of cinema of the twentieth century. It must either play with Kubrick’s imagery, offering a new interpretation of his aestheticization of violence or seek to establish its own aesthetic standards and assert them against the expectations of the audience. The production that could manage all of this would be remarkable indeed; the student production that could manage it all the more so, unfortunately this attempt is hardly remarkable.
I do not mean to say that the play is bad; merely that it takes too much upon itself. There are signs that an attempt has been made to re-imagine the work of Burgess/Kubrick in the creative use of height and space- the scene where the prison Chaplain exhorts the prisoners to reform from atop a block while they alternatively abuse him and abase themselves before him is particularly effective. However the portrayal of the violent aspects of the plot seems awkwardly caught between the stylized ‘ultraviolence’ of Kubrick and the moral shabbiness suggested by Burgess. The rapes and beatings are set to classical music but lack any sense of choreography or suggestive imagery (such as Kubrick’s decision to have Alex beat an artist to death with her own phallic sculpture: his assertion of the art of violence over the art of sculpture) and instead seem to emphasise merely fumbling barbarity. Jacob Taee’s portrayal of the protagonist, Alex, is strikingly good throughout, both sensitive and gleefully evil. However the rest of the cast is somewhat patchy; perhaps partly because they are mostly required to play multiple roles and partly because the subject matter is almost entirely concerned with Alex.
Overall, I would say, a valiant effort at a difficult task but anyone familiar with the film and/or the book will leave disappointed; anyone unfamiliar with either may well enjoy this production but would get more out of the originals.
