''Year of the Rat'' is a play by

Roy Smiles Roy Smiles (born 1966) is a singer-songwriter & playwright from Ealing, West London. He is also an occasional actor. Smiles has written twenty seven theatre plays, the best known of which is Kurt and Sid, a 2009 London West End production abo ...

about a (fictional) encounter between

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitar ...

Cyril Connolly Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...

and Sonia Brownell on the island of Jura. Connolly and Brownell were working on ''

Horizon The horizon is the apparent line that separates the surface of a celestial body from its sky when viewed from the perspective of an observer on or near the surface of the relevant body. This line divides all viewing directions based on whether i ...

'' at the time Orwell was on Jura, in bad health, writing '' Nineteen Eighty-Four''. In the 2008 staging at the

West Yorkshire Playhouse Leeds Playhouse is a theatre in the city centre of Leeds, West Yorkshire. Having originally opened in 1970 in a different location in Leeds, it reopened as West Yorkshire Playhouse, on Quarry Hill, in March 1990. After a refurbishment in 2018-20 ...

, Hugo Speer played Orwell, Claudia Elmhirst played Sonia Brownell, and

Nicholas Blane Nicholas Blane is an English actor. Career He is best known for his roles in stage productions such as '' Year of the Rat'', '' See How They Run'' and ''Democracy''. He has appeared in numerous British television and film projects, including ...

, Cyril Connolly. Both men pursue Brownell, who is sorrowing over a failed love affair ( with the writer Maurice Merleau-Ponty). Connolly shared memories with Orwell of prep school, Eton and the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was working out his anger at the Communist purges under Joseph Stalin, and the iniquities of his time. 'Rat' ( a sort of

agony aunt An advice column is a column in a question and answer format. Typically, a (usually anonymous) reader writes to the media outlet with a problem in the form of a question, and the media outlet provides an answer or response. The responses are wr ...

), 'Pig' (

Stalinism Stalinism is the means of governing and Marxist-Leninist policies implemented in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953 by Joseph Stalin. It included the creation of a one-party totalitarian police state, rapid industrialization, the theory ...

), and Boxer ( the working classes), punctuate the action. The play ends after Orwell has died, with Sonia packing up his books and wanting to know more. This stub derives from a review printed in '' The Independent'', 2 April 2008

References

{{reflist British plays