The Idiot
At Frederic Wood Theatre until Jan. 29
Tickets: 604-822-2678, ubctheatre.universitytickets.com
pushfestival.ca
I remember The Idiot as a door-stopping novel of epic proportions, packed with many of those late 19th century Russian characters: corrupt officials, useless aristocrats, greedy bourgeoisie, exquisite but unattainable beauties, wheedling sycophants, unscrupulous adulterers and parasitic hangers-on.
Dostoevsky wrote The Idiot between 1867 and 1868, and it was serialized in The Russian Messenger over a period of months. Readers thought the characters were incomplete, the narrative incoherent and the setting unrealistic and literary critics have, generally, considered it to be a lesser work than Crime and Punishment (1866).
So its a monumental challenge that James Fagan Tait took on when he accepted Neworld Theatre (in partnership with Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Moving Theatre) and PuSh International Performing Arts Festivals commission to adapt The Idiot for stage. Having had colossal success with his adaptation of Crime and Punishment, Tait waded in as have many theatre and film luminaries including Akira Kurosawa and, surprisingly, Truman Capote who, apparently, based Breakfast at Tiffanys very loosely on The Idiot.
Taits adaptation has much of what we admired in Crime and Punishment: onstage original music composed by Joelysa Pankanea on marimba, Mark Haney, bass, and Molly MacKinnon, violin; Mara Gottlers fabulous period costumesdresses with outlandish bustles, gorgeous combinations of satin and velvet, rough cotton smocks; sepia-toned, Old World lighting by Itai Erdal; an elegantly spare set by Bryan Pollock; a contingent of professional actorsincluding in this case Kevin MacDonald, Andrew McNee, David Adams, Kerry Davidson, Cherise Clarke, Craig Erickson, Richard Newman and Tom Pickettsupported by a dozen or so non-professionals, some drawn from the Downtown Eastside. Here again there is hauntingly beautiful choral work (both spoken and sung) and stately, choreographed movement beginning with the ensemble seated on an imaginary train to St. Petersburg. And once again, the script is peppered with contemporary colloquialismswhatever, F**k you, go for it and morewhich, at first, are jarringly funny and vintage Tait.
But the challenges are huge and, like the novel, this Idiot is long. With a running time of three hours, it feels as if even larger swathes could have been incised. It must be difficult to take the scissors to an epic novel, but unless a scene advances the plot or expands on character, then cut they must be. Example: the story Yepanchin (Adams) tells at the party about a stolen chicken; what we want to know is not who got the chicken in his little anecdote but who gets the girl in the play.
The girl in question is beautiful but troubled Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov (Clarke). Orphaned then raised by her guardian Totsky and later seduced by him, Nastasya is now viewed by all as a whore and unmarriageable. When Totsky tires of her and tries to marry her off, he offers 25,000 rubles as her dowry. The money attracts various suitors, but her pitiable state also draws the so-called idiot, Prince Myshkin (MacDonald) who, like Dostoevsky, is an epileptic.
Nastasya, who is always introduced with the melancholy, ensemble-intoned Nastasya Filippovna Barashkov, cant make up her mind and it drives one suitor mad and another to murder.
MacDonald and McNee are well paired as Prince Myshkin and Rogozhin. The Prince is naïve to the point of idiocya Candide-like character who thinks the world is perfectibleand Rogozhin who thinks that money and brute force will get you whatever you want. MacDonald is soft, Christ-like and yielding; McNee, burly and violent.
On opening night, Clarkes Nastasya was stunningly beautiful but a little weak; the character is actually no longer a victim but forced by circumstances to play cat and mouse to her best advantage.
The Idiot, adapted and also directed by Tait, is ambitious and beautiful, but it could lose at least half and hour. Find the story and, in Mrs. Yepanchins words, go for it.
