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Dreary play is guilty as charged
(by Herb Hammer - March 12, 2009)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
Dreary play is guilty as charged
How can you take Fyodor Dostoevsky's 700-page Russian novel and boil it down to a 90-minute play where all the parts are played by three actors? Well, you can't, actually, although it is surely easier to manage than reading the book.
Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus have recreated "Crime and Punishment" and have run it in many regional theaters. Now it stands, like it or not, at the Cleveland Play House Drury Theatre.
Ira Gershwin, in one of his collaborations with brother George, wrote, "I've found more clouds of gray than any Russian play." Russian writers have always had a way with dark, dreary work, and "Crime and Punishment" is surely no exception.
Raskolnikov, a former college student, raises a point. Ordinary people are just ordinary, but extraordinary people should be above the law, or something like that.
By this time, Raskolnikov has taken an ax to the old lady pawnbroker and her younger sister who got in the way. Paul Anthony Stewart plays this part as though he were completely mad.
We're in for a detective story of sorts. Porfiry, the detective investigating the murders, believes in "free-form investigating" and spends a lot of time with the miserable Raskolnikov.
The former college student spends most of his time thinking, rather than working, and lives in a small, stale room under a staircase.
When it comes to dreary, you just can't beat this play. Set designer Lee Savage has created a towering, odd-shaped set painted a dirty brown color. This just adds to the cold, damp, smelly play.
As the play shifts back and forth in time, we find that Raskolnikov has given 35 rubles, his last 35 rubles, to Sonia to bury her father. Somewhere along the way, Raskolnikov believes himself extraordinary and murders the two women. Carnage is all right with him.
The play works on one level. You're quite comfortable with Patrick Husted and Lethia Nall, each playing a few roles with just touches of costume changes. But are we comfortable with the play or mainly Mr. Stewart and his madness, overplaying the part to its very limit?
Finally, wracked with guilt, Raskolnikov confesses his crimes to Sonia, who has become a streetwalker in order to support her family.
Mr. Stewart's constant raging is in sharp contrast to Mr. Husted's cunning Porfiry, who draws a confession from the ragged, miserable former student.
The play might be one for students who are forced to write about it. Adults, however, will be rung out. The 90-minute one-act seems to go on forever.
Roskolnikov's and Sonia's brief show of love for each other lightens the show for a moment, but that's all.
Director Anders Kato can't seem to calm the play down, especially his principal character. Maybe if he pulled back a little, we might have had a different kind of play. Miss Campbell and Mr. Columbus have had reasonable response for their short play.
Somewhere, this wreck of a story has lost its way. It most certainly wasn't what Dostoevsky had in mind back in 1866.
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