Production does justice to The Idiot
Adaptation blends humour and melodrama
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot When: Till Jan. 29 Where: Frederic Wood Theatre, 6354 Crescent Road, UBC.
With its landscape of glamorous characters in a matrix of relationships that rivals any modern soap opera for complexity, Dostoevsky’s 700- page The Idiot is an ambitious undertaking for a theatre company.
Thankfully, everyone involved in the New World Theatre/ Vancouver Moving Theatre production is more than up to the challenge.
We first meet Prince Lyov Nikolayevich Myshkin, the titular idiot, on a train.
He explains to a fellow traveller that he has spent many years in a sanatorium in Switzerland where is was being treated for “fits.”
Played with perfect guilelessness and excellent comic timing by Kevin Macdonald, Myshkin is a complete innocent about to enter the lion’s den of corruption, greed and sex that is St. Petersburg high society in the mid 19th century.
There he meets Nastasya Fillipovna Brashkov, the beautiful mistress of an unscrupulous aristocrat who took her in when she was 12 but has lost interest.
Nastasya’s master has promised the ambitious Ganya 75,000 rubles for Nastasya’s hand in marriage. Meanwhile, the dangerously obsessed Rogozhin has also returned to St. Petersburg with a new fortune, looking for the lady’s hand.
Things get a bit wooden as most of the first half- hour is spent introducing all the characters with their polysyllabic names and overlapping familial relationships.
However, once the stage is set, the action cranks up into melodrama and the fun really begins.
Cherise Clarke beautifully balances Nastasya’s capriciousness with her vulnerability while Craig Erickson’s cynical Ganya makes a perfect counterpoint to Macdonald’s childlike Myshkin.
Andrew Mcnee is terrifying as Rogozhin, though it feels like some of the love portion of his love- hate relationship with Myshkin has been lost in editing.
Patti Allan is also noteworthy for her hilarious portrayal of Mrs. Yepanchin, Myshkin’s mercurial distant cousin.
Simple but beautiful expressionist set design by Bryan Pollock uses light and shadow in eerie counterpoint. Playwright/ director James Fagan Tait, whose previous work includes an adaptation of Crime and Punishment, offers modern dialogue, peppered judiciously with more than a few expletives, which allows the comic elements to land without distraction.
Meanwhile, the haunting score by composer/ musical director Joelysa Pankanea and some subtle but effective movement sequences heighten the emotion of the story.
To layer on the gleeful melodrama, the characters occasionally break into song. This technique works much of the time, as with the repeated chorus of Nastasya’s name, but occasionally feels tacked on during one- on- one conversations where it starts and ends without warning.
Nevertheless, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot takes great advantage of the humour and melodrama of its source material, making the threeanda- half hour running time feel effortless.
Cherise Clarke beautifully balances Nastasya’s capriciousness with her vulnerability while Craig Erickson’s cynical Ganya makes a perfect counterpoint to Macdonald’s childlike Myshkin. Andrew Mcnee is terrifying as Rogozhin, though it feels like some of the love portion of his love- hate relationship with Myshkin has been lost in editing. Patti Allan is also noteworthy for her hilarious portrayal of Mrs. Yepanchin, Myshkin’s mercurial distant cousin.