Doubleplus Contemporary: Jim Petosa's '1984'

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CATALYST THEATER's take on George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" splits the difference between a play that places Orwell's horrific vision in a contemporary American framework and one faithful to a 1949 text largely based on Stalin's USSR.

There are car bombs (instead of the book's rockets) and intercoms urging citizens to say something if they see something. But there is also an emphasis on rigid class distinctions, Big Brother's cult of personality and brutal totalitarianism that feel anachronistic.

Nonetheless, decades after the collapse of the USSR, many of Orwell's most pessimistic visions of the future — video surveillance, permanent war, crusading youth chastity leagues and so on — remain so strikingly relevant. As director Jim Petosa sees it, "America resembles '1984' more each day."

According to Petosa, the new version "street[s] the story away from a critique of the Soviet system and, instead, suggest a world closer to our own. ... We have attempted to create an antiseptic, technology-driven world that may seem benign, even attractive."

"1984" offers brilliant insights into language, politics and human nature, but it's also a pretty sexy book. In this version, Scott Fortier (Winston), Laura C. Harris (Julia) and Ian LeValley (O'Brien) fulfill the roles nicely, ratcheting up the homoerotic sadism significantly, but de-emphasizing Julia's rebellion from the waist down.

Still, "if the sexuality of secret rebellion turns you on," remarks the director, "I guess you'll find it sexy."

» Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE; through Oct. 5, $10; 202-390-7993.