THE KREUZER SONATA
Gate Theatre, London W11
Opened 11 January, 2012
***

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.

Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.

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