First of all, for those not in the know, QUONTA is the regional association of community theatres in Northern Ontario. Every year the regional body co-sponsors a community theatre festival in conjunction with one of its member groups. I was involved for years as member of two different member groups from Elliot Lake, and as an elected member of the QUONTA Board. I love attending the annual Festivals to see what my old friends in the north are up to, theatrically speaking.
This is the second of 4 write-ups of the 4 plays produced this year.
Crime and Punishment by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus
Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Directed by Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel
Presented by Gore Bay Theatre
I recall vividly the experience of reading Dostoevsky's powerful novel when I was in university. It was like watching a horrific car crash unfold in nightmare slow motion; I was repelled by what I was reading, but found I was totally incapable of stopping.
This play had exactly the same effect on me.
In this case, the nightmare takes just 90 minutes to unfold (without any intermission) and I was thoroughly engaged and gripped from start to finish. Anyone who has read the book will quickly realize that the play has discarded about 90-95% of the source material and gone straight to the heart of the matter -- the actions of Raskolnikov and his ensuing guilt feelings. The authors have extracted text from Dostoevsky's novel and arranged it in a multi-scene format where scenes can flow from one to the other in a theatrical version of the stream of consciousness.
And right there I come up against one of my few beefs about this gripping performance -- the leisurely pace of the scene changes. One character would turn and exit the stage, not moving at all quickly. Another would emerge on the other side, at just as slow a pace and finally begin the next segment of the text. Every time this happened, the energy would begin to slacken a bit. It happened frequently enough to become an impediment to the power of the whole. The idea of keeping all 3 actors on stage throughout might be usefully explored here.
The nearly bare stage was dominated by two huge set pieces, upstage right and left, which towered over the actors. These towers (useful shorthand name for them) are composed of an assemblage of elements which suggest in turn the human brain, clockwork mechanism, or giant ears. All of these are very useful metaphors for the story which unfolds.
Certainly the "action" unfolds in Raskolnikov's mind and memory. Take it as a brain split in two, and it can represent the divorce between his rational intellect and his emotional feeling, a catastrophic division which ultimately leads Raskolnikov to his downfall. The clockwork suggests his determination to neatly rationalize his actions, a determination ultimately frustrated because his conscience or emotional side refuses to play ball with his great intellect. Seen as ears, the towers can represent the omnipresent threat posed by Inspector Porfiry Petrovitch, constantly listening, watching and waiting for Raskolnikov to admit his guilt for two murders.
What was distracting was the bronze-coloured finish -- close enough to a red to perform the same attention-grabbing function that any red prop or costume is apt to perform, stealing the focus from the actors. Deadening the colour down a little more towards brown might have helped with this.
The play involves seven or eight characters but is specifically directed to be played by 3 actors. All the personality changes were smoothly handled, with simple costume additions that took no time to add or remove. This became doubly critical in the murder scene where Raskolnikov instantly has to go from murdering the money lender to murdering her sister, with both of the women played by the same actor. This is just one of the many technical challenges posed by a play of this type.
Adjudicator John P. Kelly commented that the concept of having Raskolnikov on stage throughout the half-hour preshow was a very old-fashioned, 1970s concept. I have to admit that I hope something similar can soon be said about the habit of threading a play with soundscape-type music which is not confined to scene changes but crops up at times within scenes. It seems that far too many of the plays I attend nowadays have to use this kind of musical carpeting, and it rapidly becomes as monotonous and anonymous as the totally interchangeable ballad songs of so many second-rate musical revues. Aside from my personal aversion to this particular type of music, though, some of the music cues during scenes came through so loudly that they threatened to swamp the actors. It seems all too likely that this particular auditorium is as acoustically challenging to a sound technician as it is to the onstage performers.
My own order for considering the performers: first is Vincente Belenson, who played the major role of Inspector Porfiry Petrovitch, and also appeared in a few scenes as Sonia's drunken father and as a drunk man in the street calling out "You are a murderer." He differentiated the three characters very clearly. His major role, though, absolutely suited his natural slow and gentle vocal delivery and equally amiable style of movement. Porfiry Petrovitch needs to entrap Raskolnikov with kindness and this is just what Belenson gave us.
Jessica Lajoie faced a similar challenge. Her major part is the prostitute Sonia, but she also has to appear as Raskolnikov's mother (beautifully presented upstage behind a scrim), as the objectionable moneylender and pawnbroker, Alyona and as Alyona's gentle and simple sister Lizaveta. As portrayed by Lajoie, Sonia is shown as a woman of great internal strength and courage. The wheedling, whining voice of Alyona seems hardly to be coming out of the same person. If I had to wish for anything different, it would be my desire to have Lizaveta (in her short appearances) sound more distinct from Sonia. Nonetheless, in Sonia's reading of the raising of Lazarus from the dead (a leitmotif threaded throughout the play), Lajoie was so intense and emotionally spot-on that it brought tears to my eyes.
And this brings me to the stunning performance of the central role of Rodion Raskolnikov by Chris Cayen. The role is large in length and in emotional scope. Scaling the performance so that the guilt rises naturally along a continuum from beginning to end is a major challenge. I suppose I could pick at this detail or that detail but plainly a great deal of thought and attention to detail has already been put into this character (as with every aspect of this production). The result has to be described as a performance of great stature and authority.
Directors Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel plainly worked well together as a team, and produced a tight, well-crafted production of this challenging play. My major quibbles on direction, as already indicated, lay with the choices of set colour and the staging of the scene changes. But you can be sure that these are just quibbles, certainly not to be taken as major flaws in a powerful and gripping presentation of this script.
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