Crime and Punishment

Russian literature of the nineteenth century produced so many diverse classics that it is pointless, and unnecessary, to go into naming them. They all did, however, have one thing in common, their enormous length. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is by no means an exception to this rule and the RSMAD’ production is an audacious attempt to bring what is to a large extent a psychological thriller to the stage.

Raskolnikov is a student forced to give up his studies due to poverty. In order to aid his future he kills the local moneylender, an old woman, and her sister. What follows is his attempt to deal with his guilt and confound inspectors and his family whilst finding a path to redemption.

Condensing over six hundred pages into an hour and twenty minutes is no easy feat, although it has been condensed into forty-five minutes at the Fringe before. Katya Kamotskaia’s adaptations picks and chooses the events of the thriller creating a script which, while covering most major events, will probably leave those not acquainted with the novel bamboozled. The action often confusingly leaps around as the stage is imaginatively divided into split scenes.

Kamotskaia’s script however does succeed in capturing the spirit of the various characters. Fergus Johnston’s portrayal of Raskolnikov’s state of mind is admirable, uneasily jittering across the stage, always managing to look like he would prefer to be alone. Oliver Emanuel superbly captures the dark and suspicious Zamyatov, lurking throughout every conversation in constant judgement.

The successful rendering of characters to the stage is however not enough. The patchy covering of events too often leaves you confused and having to fill in blank spaces with your knowledge of the book itself. If you haven’t read the novel this will probably leave you feeling bemused, if you have it is an intriguing attempt to bring Dostoyevsky’s classic to stage. I just can’t help but feel that Crime and Punishment has something of the curse of Don Quixote on it, leaving me ‘lost in St Petersburg’.