Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, a novel considered among the elite of literature, tells the tale of a chronically impoverished man who suffers the psychological torment that comes as consequence to his brutal crimes. However: Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s Crime and Punishment, A Comedy, the upcoming Theatre Group at Santa Barbara City College production directed by Michael Bernard at the Jurkowitz Theatre, leans far more Groucho Marx than Russian lit.
Greenberg and Rosen are the same playwrights behind Dracula, A Comedy of Terrors, produced earlier this season by Ensemble Theatre Company at the New Vic. Bernard, in conversation with Greenberg, reports the author’s message about the play’s content: “If you’re expecting the book, it’s not that. I didn’t even read the whole book.”
While this version of Crime and Punishment is mostly unrecognizable from Dostoevsky’s original work, it still, says Bernard, looks at desperate circumstances and trying to survive in a “rigged” system that isn’t set up for everyone’s success, regardless of how well they follow their social contract. “It deals with the struggle of what does it mean to be guilty?” he says. “What does it mean if you feel that what you’ve done is for the greater good — but you’ve still committed a crime?”
Nestled in the intimate Jurkowitz stage space, Bernard describes the style of the play as akin to library story time, when the reader uses different voices or wears different hats to denote a new character. “All the costumes that everybody wears are hanging on stage,” he says. “Actors are one character one minute and then throwing their hat off and becoming another character the next.” Of the eight cast members, four play the main roles in earnest, and the other four whirl through the remaining characters in barely contained chaos.
See Crime and Punishment April 18-May 3 (previews Apr.16-17) on the SBCC campus for a taste of old Russia through a modern comic lens. See bit.ly/3EatwQP.
