“immense spoken words”
Directed by Motoi Miura, Kyoto based theatre company Chiten Theatre translates Dostoevsky’s The Gamblerinto a 90-minute, verbally intense and physically demanding theatrical experience.
To partially reflect his own debt situation, Dostoevsky wrote The Gambler under intense financial pressure. The novella turns gambling into an existential debate about passion, obsession and their relations to money: however fleeting and unreliable money could be, people always tend to recognise their dignity and value through it.
In that sense, Muira’s adaptation works well. Instead of faithfully recounting Alexei Ivanovich’s journey in the General’s household and his entangled relationship with Polina, both passionately and financially, Muira exposes Alexei’s (and his fellow gamblers’) inner collapsing worlds through an ensemble cast (Takahide Akimoto, Midori Aioi, Yohei Kobayashi, Satoko Abe, Dai Ishida, Masaya Kishimoto, Shie Kubota) through immense spoken words and intense physicality. Here, everybody exposes their annihilation unreservedly. The General’s authority is gradually hollowed out by debt, Polina leans towards self-negation and the grandmother’s appetite towards money become humongous. Muira also flags out varied gambling cultures between different countries with an intent to inject humour.
Such reconstruction to carve out Dostoevsky’s eternal interrogation of the human psyche carries massive potential, leaving huge room for stronger theatrical execution. Visually, the spinning roulette design (Itaru Sugiyama) and revolving lights (Yasuhiro Fujiwara) establish immediate symbolisation, in line with the show’s overall, deliberate anti-naturalistic style. However, paired with an over-dramatised acting style, the performance sometimes feels too self-conscious. The repeated excessive amounts of direct address are although not didactic or preachy, do present as cartoonish or manga-like, especially when each line of Alexei starts with “It is me” (“僕です”). Rather than sophisticating the character’s psyche, it more leans towards to a simplified characterisation.
The ensemble’s physicality is dominated by rhythmic, swing-like dances, relentless roulette check-knocks, and tightly choreographed mis-en-scènes. While I admire the ensemble’s stamina, the overall physicality does not sufficiently compensate the spoken words, and some of the directorial choices, such as the grandmothers’ final scattering coins all over the stage, are too predictable. Similarly, the use of a mic stand and an amplified speaker remains perplexing and unclear. The only sonorous exception is the band performance by kukangendai(空間現代), an indie-rock band formed in early 2000. Their intense live soundscape does add onto the production’s visceral charges and theatrical onslaughts, revealing the gamblers’ emotive up-side-downs that are always exciting, excruciating and ultimately self-destructive.
The show runs until 15th Feb. Tickets can be found here.