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Animal Farm. Germinal Stage's new theater — only a few miles from the one the company left last year, and even smaller — is cozy, welcoming and workable. Walking in feels a bit like entering a time warp. The Germinal faithful, along with a few young initiates, throng the lobby, and the only changes are minor: The scent of artistic director Ed Baierlein's pipe smoke hasn't yet completely permeated the building, and there's a shiny new coffeepot in place of the dingy ancient one that for decades produced the bitterest, dreggiest coffee in town. Baierlein is still focusing on playwrights whose work he's explored often before, and using many of the same actors. This Animal Farm is almost exactly the same as the one he mounted in 2003, and there's only one new member in the five-person cast. Still, the show is tight and convincing and not the least bit stale, and George Orwell's satirical parable about the dangers of totalitarianism feels even more germane today as the shadows falling across our world darken and lengthen. Orwell's pseudo-children's story tells the tale of a group of abused and hungry animals who drive their cruel farmer off his land and take over, determined to create a utopia under the guidance of the cleverest species among them, the pigs. But soon the pigs are assuming human prerogatives and the animals' beautiful revolution is falling apart. Orwell caricatures with deadly accuracy the techniques of the Soviet Union and other totalitarian regimes: the show trials, the propaganda methods, the use of religion to mitigate earthly distress. Snowball, the comrade-pig who genuinely tried to better everyone's lives, is driven away and then shows up in the pigs' propaganda as a demonic larger-than-life figure bent on sabotage. All of this is conveyed with clarity and wit. Presented by Germinal Stage through September 14, 73rd Avenue Playhouse, 7287 Lowell Boulevard, Westminster, 303-455-7108, germinalstage.com. Reviewed September 4.