Crime and Punishment
Adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky by Jack Jacobs who also directs
Off By Heart
Jack Studio Theatre, Brockley
Star rating 3.5
This show is an ambitious and promising debut for Off by Heart. Founded by Jack Jacobs, the company’s mission is to “strip stories to their core” so I suppose Dostoevsky’s famous 1866 novel is a good place to start.
Raskolnikov (Jack Jacobs) is an impoverished student with radical thoughts about human nature. He commits murder almost as an experiment and is thereafter beset by a strange mixture of conscience, anxiety, poverty and hunger. As an actor Jacobs is very good at internalising all this and as a writer he has pared the whole down to 95 minutes
Andrew Callahghan is superb both as Marmeladov a hungry, wide eyed drunk Raskolikov meets in a tavern and then as his interrogator Porfiry – cunning, urbane, reasonable. The dialogue between them is well balanced and timed as Raskolnikov beginning to feel more trapped and threatened at the same time as refusing to confess and often pre-empting Marmeladov.
The third cast member is Faye Bishop who plays three female roles. Her grotesque masked physicality as the pawn broker is quite fun but she isn’t very convincing as Sonya, Porfory’s daughter, who has in desperation signed up as a prostitute. She’s far too fragrant. Bishop sings a haunting Russian folk song rather beautifully though which adds atmosphere.
The sound in this show is very striking. We hear voices speaking Russian and some very grating noises meant to suggest street sound mirroring Raskolnikov’s state of mind, There is also recorded song – presumably Bishop again – and low level background music in minor keys and Russian in flavour, No one is credited for this although Ben Bayliss is thanked “for his ear on the sound design”. Whoever put it together did an impressive job.
Of course it’s wordy – it’s a 700 page, mid 19th century Russian novel of ideas – but Jacobs has found ways of making this take on Crime and Punishment quite punchy without compromising on the core arguments.
I shall be very interested to see what Off My Heart does next.
