The Brothers Karamazov
Adapted by Heidi Stillman
from the novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Directed by Heidi Stillman
At the Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago
A review by M. D. Ball of the performance on November 2, 2008
Ambition is like the wind: it can propel a sailboat or rip a tree out by its roots. And Lookingglass' production of The Brothers Karamazov, which Heidi Stillman adapted from Dostoevsky's novel, is nothing if not ambitious. In my eyes, a play such as this one should stand on its own merits, or fall on its own demerits, without being compared to the eponymous book; in other words, the play can be treated as an independent creation of its author. Truth be told, however, comparison with the novel is inevitable, not only because the temptation is irresistible, but also because the book turns a light on the play's darker corners.
Years ago, I read an English translation of Freud's Die Urgestalt der Brüder Karamasoff, published in 1928, in which he called The Brothers Karamazov "the most magnificent novel ever written". Many other thinkers worthy of respect have shared that opinion. If we ask ourselves what it is about Dostoevsky's magnum opus that propels it to such literary heights, we find that beyond being a tale of patricide, it explores through the characters in a story many of the profound questions that encircle human existence: religious faith, rationalism, orthodoxy, madness, love, guilt, freedom, hatred, morality, collective responsibility, and -- arguably the conclusion (or epiphany) that Dostoevsky wants his reader to take away from the book -- human interconnectedness.
In my opinion, the novel's success in confronting these psychological, emotional, and philosophical issues -- and hence what accounts for its "greatness" -- rests in the very quality whose absence from Stillman's adaptation cripples this play. Into three and a half hours, she tries to condense what Dostoevsky expanded into more than 800 pages; the novel takes the time to develop the plot, characters, and the ideas they wrestle with, to let them engage the reader. In this play, however, the scene changes were too numerous, too frequent, and too abrupt. Consequently, this adaptation felt more like a series of loosely related vignettes, though admittedly with a few sterling moments, than it felt like a coherent unitary work for the stage. Its own ambition hurt it.
Fyodor, played by Craig Spidle, is a middle-aged landowner. But, more importantly, he's a buffoon and a shameless profligate, a narcissistic father who neglected his sons, a man who sneers at everything decent. Such a man isn't easy to portray believably because the audience knows the actor is trying to be reprehensibly wicked; they're watching for exaggeration. Spidle, however, stopped short of cheap caricature, making his Fyodor repulsive while still fitting him with a sympathetic penumbra. In fact, Stillman and Spidle imparted to his character more indifference than malice; it wasn't so much that Fyodor wanted to destroy his sons as it was that he wanted to indulge his own hedonism.
Alyosha, played by Doug Hara, is Fyodor's monk-son, the hero of the novel, and the unifying character in Stillman's adaptation. The actor who assumes this role accepts a large responsibility in that Alyosha serves as messenger, confidant, peacemaker, and moral example throughout the play. Even granted that Hara was portraying an unassuming individual in Alyosha, most of his performance was bland. Yes, he's a peaceful monk, but there's a difference between being peaceful and being insipid. At the end, moreover, Alyosha delivers the play's capstone, a speech that fulfills two functions: to explicate the "interconnectedness" that had been only implicit theretofore, and to encourage the turning of grief into hope. This scene might have been the most poignant in the entire play, if what should have been Alyosha's spontaneous and inspirational short homily hadn't been Hara's drab and mechanical recitation of scripted words.
Scholars tell us that Rationalism and Nihilism pervaded Russia at the time of this story. Joseph Frank, who wrote a biography of Dostoevsky, said that The Brothers Karamazov lifted the Russian Nihilists to "artistic heights equaling the greatest creations of Greek and Elizabethan tragedy" (Dostoevsky: The Miraculous Years, 1865-1871). Some of the best moments in either the novel or the play were rooted in the struggle between these movements and Russian Orthodoxy, or at least the belief that life has inherent meaning. Alyosha's religious faith balances the rationalism, or outright atheism, of his brother Ivan, who was disturbed by what he perceived as senseless suffering all around him. Philip R. Smith, who played this role, skillfully used smirking and dismissive posturing to make me believe in his character's rejection of all things spiritual. One of the best scenes in the play was the passionate but gentle exchange between these two brothers, as Alyosha's faith confronted Ivan's nihilism, even while their love for each other remained unshaken. The two of them together made me briefly forget that I was watching a performance; indeed, when the scene was over, I felt as though I'd been eavesdropping on their conversation.
But I was less persuaded about the sincerity of Smith's Ivan, by which I mean that Smith created the kind of me-thinks-the-man-doth-protest-too-much smugness that often accompanies an unacknowledged doubt in one's own position. Ivan had deluded himself into a false confidence. Smith conveyed Ivan's below-the-surface doubt, an accomplishment that screams effective acting, and, despite having a smaller role, he gave us a far more interesting character than did Hara. For me, however, there was admittedly one disappointment in Smith's performance, namely, the suddenness of Ivan's descent into madness. It lacked development and seemed contrived. But it was in line with the play's overarching weakness, which I cited above.
Joe Sikora played Dmitri, the third Karamazov brother. Being a sensualist, Dmitri squanders resources on debauchery and then finds himself in need of even more money. This fuels Dmitri's belief that Fyodor is withholding his rightful inheritance, and his indignation is made all the worse by their competition for the affections of the same woman. Sikora captured the personality of this impetuous young man with a sense of entitlement, a man who had too little control over his own impulses and who knew that his own baseness enslaved him, a man who combined the power of an adult with the self-indulgence of a child. It's a difficult role, but Dmitri's erratic behavior and mood swings were largely believable, though it did seem that Sikora succumbed once in a while to the lure of histrionics.
Smerdyakov, rumored to be Fyodor's illegitimate son and, therefore, the fourth brother, was played by Lawrence Grimm. This character is enigmatic inasmuch as he keeps buoying the question of whether his apparent naïvete is feigned. Is he cowardly? Or is he bold? Is he manipulating people by telling them what they expect to hear? Smerdyakov is Fyodor's saturnine lackey, who identifies with Ivan and his atheism; he's also epileptic (like Dostoevsky), anxious, and unstable. As Smith did for Ivan, Grimm met the challenge of rendering Smerdyakov's sincerity questionable, and he did so while bringing out sinister intimations that were absent from Ivan's self-delusion.
This play reminded me of Steven Guirgis' The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, which also suffered from what I called "awkward abortions of what might have proven to be...character-developing moments". Like Guirgis in his original story, Stillman had a good idea in this adaptation of a literary masterpiece, but it needs some fearless and judicious editing to tame its ambition so that we end up caring about the characters in this story and appreciating the rich questions they ask.