Crime and Punishment Review – A captivating portrait of Dostoyevsky’s murderous hero | platform

YIt could be said that it was a bold move to present Dostoyevsky’s historical novel with a cast of three. And it’s not just because Northern Broadsides doesn’t typically offer small-scale edits: this studio tour is the first of its kind. More importantly, the 750-page literary classic suggests no such economy of means.

However, you could make the case that Laurie Sansom’s recast should have been bolder. What would it have been like if the director had gone all out and limited it to one actor?

Counterintuitive or not, the best scenes in this production are when Conor Curren is alone on stage as Raskolnikov, the troublesome hero who commits a double murder for no better reason than a thought experiment. Whether displaying sociopathic indifference or feverish remorse, Korine is compelling when he has the opportunity to let us into his thinking. Haunted and disheveled, he is a delusional philosopher, driven by extreme poverty to transform abstract thought into monstrous action. Dostoyevsky’s innovation was to show the crime from the perspective of the criminal, and Sansom’s adaptation is most engaging when it does the same.

Often times, other scenes, in which Korine argues with Trudy Acobeng and Niall Costigan, both playing multiple roles, feel small and relatively indistinct. The tension dissipates in light-hearted exchanges between Raskolnikov and those who drift in and out of his life, rarely staying long enough to establish a story of their own. They are more than mere projections of his troubled mind, but less than full-fledged characters. They cannot match the cold terror of a lone killer counting the 730 steps before his kill.

Although this approach is highly variable, it is theatrically resourceful. Actors play a key role in Chris Davey’s dynamic lighting, repositioning counter-angle lamps to create the atmosphere of an interrogation room or holding flashlights for scenes of mystical contemplation.

Meanwhile, a steep beam through a skylight in the Rose Rivette set casts an icy chill over Raskolnikov’s bed as cardboard models of St. Petersburg residences illuminate floor after floor. As Philip Pinsky’s soundtrack moves from beautiful keyboard melodies to haunting rumbles, it creates an atmosphere of expressive dread.