Dostoevsky’s masterpiece asks if man can fashion morality in a new adaptation of the classic novel
A young man with a furrowed brow in a shabby, hole-ridden black coat walks slowly across the stage, bent over with the weight of a stone. He stops at one end, pauses; then turns around to walk back again. To adapt one of the greatest novels ever written is a similar task – just when you feel you can rest, another route must be taken, another avenue explored.
This is the challenge writer and director Jack Jacobs has taken on in his adaptation of Dostoevsky’s 1866 masterpiece, Crime and Punishment. He pares the novel back, but nonetheless touches on the moral morass that lies at the heart of this disturbing, brilliant novel. The stone is rolled back, and beneath is crawling, squirming ugliness. There is also the glint of something else in the soil, just catching the light.
In Jacob’s adaptation there is the inevitable loss of nuance due to the constraints of a 90 minute show, but the choices made with streamlining plot and character make for a pacey performance with a finely sharpened sense of claustrophobia.
Jacobs plays the protagonist Raskolnikov, a poverty-stricken student who in his extreme isolation and mental distress cogitates upon a theory, and decides to act upon it. The theory in question: if you are extraordinary, if you are truly great, are you above the moral laws that govern everyone else? To test this, Raskolnikov kills an old pawnbroker, whose life brings misery on everyone else.
The play restlessly circles through Raskolnikov’s psychological torture as he wrestles with guilt and the ruthless logic he tries to cling to. Jacobs portrays him with understanding, but there are times when the tautness of Raskolnikov’s inner world slackens unnecessarily.
Circling around Raskolnikov is detective Porfiry, brilliantly played by Andrew Callaghan. In the moments of interaction between Porfiry and Raskolnikov the concerns of the play have a glaring light shone upon their shadowy forms and are thrown into brutal relief.
Callaghan multi-roles as the alcoholic Marmeladov, whose addiction has brought ruin on his family, including his daughter Sonya (Faye Bishop). In another of the everyday tragedies of the play, Marmeladov is both despicable and deeply pitiable in his plight; Callaghan finds both, as well as comedy. Despite what one might think, Dostoevsky can be deeply funny in his writing, with a rich seam of satire running through the otherwise slightly relentless suffering. Meanwhile, Bishop portrays Sonya with grace as she sits ‘like patience on a monument’, waiting and accepting.
The set is well designed by Geoff Howard, with screens of white paper stretched tight and bandages curling down, mirroring the bandages wrapped around Raskolnikov’s feet, numb to the cold and hard ground. The numbness fades as the horror and glory of human emotion unwinds, in a play that does justice to the depth of a masterpiece.
Crime and Punishment is at the Jack Studio Theatre until the 26th September. Tickets linked here.