Lyceum Theatre 29/10/13
Verdict: excellent – if you like that
sort of thing!
I feel I may have had more time for
this as a young man. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wrote
Преступлéние
и наказáние (originally
published in 1866) in his mid forties when he was in the middle of a
gambling addiction that left him penniless and hungry. What a dick.
The book follows the exploits of law student, Raskolnikov,
also penniless and hungry, who, instead of doing translations like
his fellow student Razumikhin to raise money, drops out of his
course, takes to his bed, eats only handouts from a friend and
fixates on the murder of the (supposedly evil) pawnbroker he has
hocked all his stuff to. What a dick.
He kills the pawnbroker (the Crime
of the title) and another woman who turns up at the wrong moment to
witness the crime, then spends the rest of the show justifying his
actions, feeling guilty and is on the point of confessing more than
once. He is interviewed by the police although another person
confesses to the crime. While there is some banter about justifying a
crime if everyone is better off afterwards, it all leads to the
second part of the title with a confession followed by the
Punishment.
Three hours heavy with a minimal stage,
sounded awful and I was not looking forward to this much at all.
However a £5 discounted ticket (thanks Mike) is a small price to
pay. The trouble was I'd had an utterly fabulous afternoon in the
Botanics taking photos of the dazzling autumn colours and some
charming squirrels and all this gloom and doom seemed, well a bit
dreary by comparison. And parts of it, towards the interval as my
eyelids dropped, were. Another 5 minutes and I'd have been
snoring. However the whole thing was done so superbly well that I
take my hat off to all concerned and applaud their efforts. Won't be
reading the book any time soon though.
woopsie - nodded off and dreamt of the botanics
The performance started (or was
on-going) as we entered the auditorium with the lights up and the
cast walking about on stage. Once we were seated the cast sang a
hymn-like Russian flavoured number in minor harmonies before the main
man, an excellent Adam Best stepped forward and the house lights
dimmed to let us hear his thesis on murder. The show hangs entirely
on his central performance and he carries it off with admirable
commitment and ability. We totally believe the lightheaded delirium
of hunger and angst, through Best's acting rather than his physical
appearance. His breaking wavering voice defines the haunted struggle
of the protagonist and discourages us from writing it off as just
being beset by mental health issues, although frankly I think this is
the central concern underlying the plot. Dostoyevsky has been through
many of the dire circumstances he writes about and the issues are
dealt with from within, rather than objectively, which perhaps lends
an authority to the piece, making it more compelling. Myself, I
prefer squirrels and orange backlit trees. (The main character pretty
much admits enjoying the 1,500 mile trek to Siberia (as part of the
Punishment,) suggesting a lot of what he needed was just to
get out more.)
And the book has 720 pages. People
would probably complain if the stage version hacked that down to 40
minutes though I think if the best 40 minutes of tonight's show was
stood on its own it would be very splendid. There was much that was
terrific. The staging was casual minimal. Not a blank canvas but a
fairly uncluttered stage with draped curtain behind, and just a row
of musical instruments (piano, harpsichord, double bass, balalaika,
bowed cymbal, drum etc) and furniture along the back – couches and
chairs for the cast (dressed in a strangely credible mix of
1866~contemporary) who would be disappeared by the lighting or remain
half lit as grumbling or sarcastic audience to Raskolnikov's
soliloquies, (particularly responsive when R would compare himself
egotistically to Napoleon or a “great man”.) And suddenly rise en
masse, perfectly on cue, to accentuate a point or express shock. Or
play the musical instruments.
The murder scene was brilliantly
conveyed. It is important to the gravitas of the play that the
central Crime is handled well. Raskolnikov's weapon of choice
is an axe. (His mother later states that as a child he had a terrible
temper and she would attend to this by giving him an axe to chop
wood! - there are several good jokes along the way.) So how do you do
a double axe murder every night and twice on Wednesdays without it
looking stagy while avoiding actual bloodshed? Here they succeed
superbly with a slash of dark red gore oozing down heavy polythene
slats that is worth the admission price alone. The prostitutes' scene
with descending red lamps and enough dry ice to have the stalls in
coughing fits is similarly striking. (The cast, submerged, never so
much as cleared their throats.) Less impressive but still intriguing
was the on-stage cast, vocalising others' strained breathing (and off stage
voices) into visible mics. And the use of mobile doors on casters to
enter and leave scenes was simple, effective, very smoothly handled
and completely convincing.
I found the casts' ability to accompany
the show musically really impressive. (This was NOT a musical however and in no way was attempting a Les Mis type adaptation. There were no breaking into song moments (I stole a loaf of bread) and no showstopping sing-along shite.) They would pick up instruments
as the thing progressed and knock out a ticking ambient passage on
percussion and piano (with the piano opened and plucked like a harp)
that perfectly underscored the chilling or painful speeches of the
central players. (And would start and stop with impeccable timing.) I
have no idea if the cast faced musical auditions “now what
musical instrument can you bring to this performance” but
several of them were outstanding. (Razumikhin on clarinet and voice.)
In fact George Costigan was so adept plucking out jazzy riffs on the
double bass I first thought he was miming to an audio track but as
things progressed his performance seemed to be for real. (Though some
piano melodies appeared without anyone seeming to play them.) And he, George, played a mandolin at another point. And this from a man I first
encountered in Rita Sue and Bob Too.
In C&P he played 3 characters, for
no other reason than he appeared able to, and was available.
Potentially confusing as Raskolnikov admits to Costigan's police
interrogator that he just left the death scene of Costigan's superbly
drunken Marmeladov. However they just about get away with it. At
other times the cast break into a frugally accompanied chorus,
walking a nice line between Russian folk melodies, while avoiding
descent into Volga Boatmen territory. While there are Russian nuances
throughout the play, the whole (like the costumes) is not strictly
tethered to time or place, leaving room for references to current
issues, be it self-interested corrupt bankers or the politics of
power.
The final minutes are a beautiful
hypnotic mix of exhaustion and struggle and dreamscape with a snow
shower and a spare haunting melody that perfectly rounds off the
show, compressing the last chapters of the book into a whispered
narrative that is more than a little spellbinding.
