Dostoyevsky’s savage satire still has teeth
Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story The Crocodile is a satirical fable about a St Petersburg civil servant, Ivan Matveitch, who is devoured by a crocodile. Still alive after being swallowed, he remains entombed in the monster’s belly while his wife and friends plead with various reluctant officials to slit open the creature and release him. But as the spectacle begins to draw a curious throng of the paying public, he begins to see advantages in his unexpected notoriety.
Tom Basden, whose writing credits include
Peep Show and Plebs, finds a modern resonance in Dostoyevsky’s distaste for a society glamoured by celebrity and the perverse logic of free market economics. His dramatisation, commissioned for the Manchester International Festival, transforms Ivan (Ciaran Owens) from a civil servant into a failed actor.
Simon Bird – no stranger to celebrity after his Bafta- winning performance as Will, the posh boy from The Inbetweeners – reprises a grown-up version of Will’s nerdy persona as Ivan’s painfully respectable old friend and straight man, Zack.
During a trip to see the crocodile, Zack attempts an intervention, pleading with Ivan to follow the example of his former squeeze, Anya (Emma Sidi), and abandon the stage for some more worthwhile pursuit. Ivan, defending his Bohemian credentials while moodily poking the apparently moribund crocodile, is suddenly snapped up.
Basden’s witty updating treats Dostoyevsky’s original with a nicely assured mixture of respect and irreverence. Ned Bennett’s direction maintains a fine balance of contained anarchy, beautifully supported by Fly Davis’s subversive designs. There is a dashing, semi-improvisatory feel to the performances. Bird’s plaintively rational Zack is an eloquent voice of beleaguered caution, beset on every side by the grotesque rationalisations of his old friend and the woman he loves.
The overall effect is of an ensemble who are having a high old time, and their pleasure in this savagely silly satire is infectious.