TNM takes up formidable challenge of Dostoyevsky’s tale The Idiot
Long considered one of the most formidable, if not forbidding, of the great novelists, Fyodor Dostoyevsky has been getting more Montreal stage time than all his 19th-century peers put together over the last few years.
In 2016, The Gambler played Théâtre Prospero’s mainstage at the same time as Notes From Underground hunkered down in its basement studio theatre. In the same year, Hudson Village Theatre played host to a slapstick adaptation of the Russian maestro’s early and more obviously comic caper, The Double. Centaur’s 2011 Wildside included a show called Itsy-Bitsy Spider, an eccentric take on the infamous (and oft-banned) Stavrogin’s Confession chapter from The Possessed. There was even an evening dedicated to the great man at Montreal Improv a few weeks back called Dostoyevsky: Firebrand of Russia.
Now TNM has taken up the challenge with an adaptation of The Idiot (or L’Idiot as it’s called in this francophone production), which runs from March 20 to April 14. Arguably the most humane and engaging of Dostoyevsky’s four major novels, it’s about an epileptic Christ-like innocent adrift in a sordid St. Petersburg society awash with intrigue, backbiting, sexual exploitation and murderous obsession.
The team behind this venture is director Catherine Vidal and playwright Étienne Lepage, who previously collaborated together on the Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui show Robin and Marion.
The Montreal Gazette sat down with Lepage in a TNM dressing room, where a rack of costumes hung ready to be inhabited by the 12-strong cast, which includes Paul Ahmarani (who played the titular gambler in that Prospero adaptation), La Licorne boss Denis Bernard and, as The Idiot himself (a.k.a. Prince Myshkin), Renaud Lacelle-Bourdon, who has worked with Lepage on several previous shows.
“They’re kind of a mix,” Lepage says of the costumes. “When Myshkin becomes rich in the second half, he’s really dressed à la mode dernière. So now we have this cool little thing ” — Lepage points out Myshkin’s second- act finery, describing the costume concept generally as “Princess Adidas.”
“We wanted to make it contemporary, because we need people to relate,” Lepage goes on to explain. “We didn’t want to be too far into the literary, nor too deep into Russia, but we didn’t want to take it too far into contemporary Montreal, either. So it’s kind of a third space.”
This “third space” includes a radical transposing of Dostoyevsky’s 600-page-plus of dense prose into something theatrically alive. Part of Lepage’s solution is to present it as an obvious fiction that’s happening right there on the stage.
“The characters are aware all the time that there’s a public in front of them,” he says. “They’re going to say what they have to say, but it’s as if they’re in a public space. They’re not in a
ballroom, but they’re not in a private little closet, either.”
Those familiar with Lepage’s work won’t be surprised to learn that he’s somewhat averse to creating a comfortably familiar costume drama. The two Festival TransAmériques shows he worked on with choreographer Frédérick Gravel — Ainsi parlait in 2013 and Logique du pire in 2016 — upended audience expectations with their eccentric gadfly mash-ups. The Idiot’s revolutionary (or pre-Revolutionary) sensibility also no doubt appealed to the author of Toccate et Fugue, the recent Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui play Lepage wrote about young people caught up in a movement in spite of their own self-centredness.
Prince Myshkin might be said to be a mirror image of those young people in that he turns out to be a revolutionary figure through an almost excessive lack of ego.
Something of a revolutionary figure himself — he was clubbed by the police while taking part in 2012’s “printemps érables” — Lepage initially hoped to use Dostoyevsky’s novel as a way to aggressively combat contemporary woes. But in an example of life imitating life, Myshkin’s kindly example sent him in a different direction
“Prince Myshkin’s revolutionary thoughts are really different than I expected,” Lepage explains. “They’re more Christian. He believes in free will, whereas if I’m trying to change things through violence, I’m not believing in your free will, I’m doing it for you. So that’s the really revolutionary proposition of this guy: ‘I’m doing nothing, but not because I’m an idiot, but because I believe in you.’ And that’s more hardcore as a proposition than all these superhero movies where, if you believe in something, you do it with your fists.”
One aspect of Dostoyevsky’s novels often clouded by all the agonized philosophizing and encroaching darkness is how laugh-out-loud funny they can be.
“Yes, it was a very pleasant discovery,” Lepage agrees. “I was just getting through reading Crime and Punishment, so I thought I was going to be in for something really heavy with The Idiot, too. But I found myself thinking: Oh, that’s comedy. These characters, they’re just great. They’re so over the top.
“As soon as you see someone being calm and reserved, you know they’re about to start yelling and making fools of themselves. They’re like children.”
One deadly serious aspect of The Idiot, however, is the backstory and enduring trauma of its heroine, Nastasia, played in this production by Evelyne Brochu. As a child, she’s raised, groomed and repeatedly raped by an upper-class “benefactor,” though as Lepage points out, Dostoyevsky, in keeping with his times, isn’t so direct about what has really happened to her.
“I think in Dostoyevsky’s time, what the guy did to her as a child was seen as being more acceptable. It wasn’t seen as rape. He fed and clothed her and ‘took care of her,’ and then when she grew older, he would ‘visit her.’ But I wanted to be direct and make it clear — it’s rape. There’s no reason to be ambiguous anymore.”
Another classic receiving a francophone production this week is Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, adapted by Steve Gagnon and Frédéric Bélanger as Le Songe d’une nuit d’été. It plays at Théâtre Denise-Pelletier (4352 Ste-Catherine St. E.) from March 21 to April 18. Call 514253-8974 or visit denisepelletier.qc.ca