The first notable choice in the Theater Group at SBCC’s production of Crime and Punishment, A Comedy was director Michael Bernard’s (lighthearted) apology in the program, making preemptive amends to Dostoyevsky purists who may may raise an eyebrow at the lax relationship between Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen’s play and its source material. In a thematic sense, the concepts of the novel and the play align: Rodya Raskolnikov is a young man buried in debt, driven to murder someone extorting him. An exploration of guilt and justification follows as Rodya decides whether to confess his crime and relieve his existential burden or live free with the gathering storm on his conscience.
From there, the novel and the play diverge dramatically. The novel is high stakes and fatalistic, whereas the stage comedy flirts with the ridiculous and enjoys jokes about Russian literature. Bernard’s directorial strategy was to have the main players (actors Tyler Gilbert, Raina Williams, Benjamin Curtis, and Rachel Jordan Brown) play the show straight while the ensemble (Matthew Tavianini, Sasha Gray, Dreamer Rae Wilson, and Nicholis Sheley) plays madcap versions of everyone else — which could create a “sane people surviving in an insane world” motif that supports the theory of the play. Yet in practice, there’s a lack of delineative energy between the “straight” actors and the comic thrusters, leaving much room for the performers to lean (even fall) into the comedy to kick the potential zaniness into a higher gear.
SBCC’s Crime and Punishment wraps with a tidy sitcom ending that ties up all the loose ends. Overall, the comedic aspect is hit or miss, but conceptually the play does push audiences to consider the same interesting ideas about desperation versus morality within social scaffolding presented by Dostoevsky, ideas certainly worth considering. See Crime and Punishment, A Comedy through May 3 in the Jurkowitz Theatre. https://bit.ly/43Zruxt
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