‘Orwellian’ needs something of a refit. The overused and abused adjective is rarely employed except to qualify the (supposed) ‘nightmares’ of our security-paranoid age. Really, though, in almost all circumstances, nightmarish or merely discomforting, ‘Orwellian’ ought just to mean ‘exceptionally prescient’.

The accuracy of Orwell’s cultural predictions (if not, pace Shami Chakrabati, all of his moral conclusions) is well exhibited in Orwell: A Celebration, a ‘package of playlets’ – so called by adapter Dominic Cavendish, Oxfordshire resident and deputy theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph – drawn from some of Orwell’s finest writings.

Coming Up for Air stars comedian Hal Cruttenden as not-so-jolly (and not-so-fictional) George Bowling, insurance salesman. Depressed by his marriage and worried about the prospects of a second major international conflict, George (geddit?) monologues, wittily and with many a diversion, on how he revisited a blissful, pre-industrial scene from his childhood – a brimming fishpond outside Lower Binfield (Henley) – only to discover it has been turned into a municipal dump.

Act two is a triptych of shorter items. A Hanging and Shooting an Elephant both narrate unpleasant and politically formative episodes from Orwell’s time in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. Each was delivered brilliantly (by Alan Cox and Ben Porter, respectively), and Orwell’s knife-edge, journalistic, show-don’t-tell instinct for the killer detail is indicative of the author – any author – at his peak.

And then, rather inevitably, the interrogation scene from Nineteen Eighty-Four (while we’re here, can anyone explain why there’s only one hyphen in that?): Porter as Winston, Cox as O’Brien. Frankly, this seemed obvious and unnecessary, and I was left thinking it had only been included because grandees from the Orwell Prize and Liberty are supporting the show (intellectually speaking: in monetary terms, the show is supporting them), and it’s the 60th anniversary this month (new editions from Penguin, etc.) and you just can’t leave out the magnum opus if you want to get bums on seats (and they didn’t have actors for Animal Farm).

All in all, a neat bit of small-scale theatre, and a fitting tribute. And you don’t have to be an Orwell geek, which is always a plus.

Trafalgar Studios, Whitehall, London. Until July 4. Tickets: tel. 0870 060 6632 ambassadortickets.

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