This is the sort of piece that reminds
us how fortunate we are not to live in the age of compartmented,
corridorless trains. To be closeted even for 75 minutes with as intense
a companion as protagonist Pozdynyshev here would be a torment and a
terror. Personally, I would have taken a leap into the passing
countryside at his casual yet portentous line, “I was acquitted, just
so we’re clear.”
Tolstoy envisaged his 1889 short story being staged with music, and
adapter Nancy Harris and director Natalie Abrahami have done precisely
this in a production which premiered at the Gate in late 2009 and now
returns briefly before transferring to New York’s La MaMa. As Hilton
McRae’s Pozdynyshev, however urbanely, offers more and more of his
views on love, sex, marriage and music, the far wall of his railway
compartment (in Chloe Lamford’s set design) grows periodically
semi-transparent and behind it we catch glimpses of Sophie Scott and
Tobias Beer as his wife and the violinist with whom, at least in his
imagination, she begins an affair.
We are now more accustomed to explicit discussion of such matters, and
so may miss the story’s comparative audacity for its time: its graphic
dissection of sexual obsession led to its originally being banned from
publication in Russia. In other respects, though, Pozdynyshev’s
character still glows lividly through. McRae is wonderfully
understated, making use of tiny gestures such as fastidiously tidying
an eyebrow; even when climactically recounting his murderous frenzy, he
remains semi-detached. Unlike Strindberg’s, this misogyny is not
authorially endorsed; the character’s views may in some respects
parallel Tolstoy’s own confused attitudes towards sex, but he is not a
surrogate. This is a literary study in individual psychopathology, not
a manifesto.
Carolyn Downing’s sound design uses train noises and intrusions of
atonality as well as the principal music to underscore the emotions
being portrayed both directly and at one remove; Mark Howland’s
lighting is likewise thoughtful, keeping our views behind the gauze
brief and less than distinct, and with McRae beginning his monologue to
us while the auditorium is still in its pre-show state, falling
gradually over several minutes to standard stalls gloom. It makes for a
striking coda to Abrahami and Carrie Cracknell’s joint tenure as
artistic directors of the Gate.
Written for the Financial
Times.