Best Bit of Big Brother Onstage: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company's "1984"

You’d think that George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 (written in 1949) would be so passé that it could no longer scare anyone. But when the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company presented a stage adaptation of it in October, the classic theater company used special effects to frighten the bejesus out of everyone with a ticket. Brave Berlin, the creative minds behind 2017’s BLINK light festival, created videos of rats crawling everywhere — even gigantically visible in the second-floor windows of the company’s new theater facing Washington Park. Some folks in Over-the-Rhine are still twitching. Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 1195 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, cincyshakes.com.