Year of the Rat is a play by Roy Smiles

Roy Smiles

Roy Smiles is an English playwright and singer-songwriter from West London, also occasional actor.-Career:Roy Smiles is the author of twenty three produced stage plays...

 about a (fictional) encounter between George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

, Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly

Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...

 and Sonia Brownell

Sonia Brownell

Sonia Mary Brownell was the second and last wife of writer George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. She was also known as Sonia Blair or Sonia Orwell.-Background:...

 on the island of Jura

Jura, Scotland

Jura is an island in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, situated adjacent and to the north-east of Islay. Part of the island is designated as a National Scenic Area. Until the twentieth century Jura was dominated - and most of it was eventually owned - by the Campbell clan of Inveraray Castle on Loch...

. Connolly and Brownell were working on Horizon

Horizon (magazine)

Horizon: A Review of Literature and Art was an influential literary magazine published in London, between 1940 and 1949. It was edited by Cyril Connolly who gave a platform to a wide range of distinguished and emerging writers....

at the time Orwell was on Jura, in bad health, writing Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

.

In the 2008 staging at the West Yorkshire Playhouse

West Yorkshire Playhouse

The West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, England is a theatre which opened in March 1990 as part of the regeneration of the Quarry Hill area of the city...

 , Hugo Speer

Hugo Speer

Hugo Speer is an English actor.He was born in Harrogate, Yorkshire, and educated at Harrogate Grammar School. He studied acting at The Arts Educational School....

 played Orwell, Claudia Elmhirst played Sonia Brownell, and Nicholas Blane, Cyril Connolly.

Both men pursue Brownell, who is sorrowing over a failed love affair ( with the writer Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Maurice Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenological philosopher, strongly influenced by Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in addition to being closely associated with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir...

). Connolly shared memories with Orwell of prep school, Eton and the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. Orwell was working out his anger at the Communist purges under Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, and the iniquities of his time. 'Rat' ( a sort of agony aunt), 'Pig' (Stalinism

Stalinism

Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...

), 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.