Crime and Punishment E-Book

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

An exciting, fresh and accessible adaptation of Dostoyevsky's masterful novel. Starving, destitute student Raskolnikov is surrounded by the harsh injustices of the world: the grime of poverty and prostitution, unscrupulous pawnbrokers chasing debts, and a sister about to marry someone she doesn't love to keep her family alive. His guilt is unbearable. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer any chance of redemption. As Raskolnikov enters a dangerous cat and mouse game with the examining magistrate, a psychological thriller unfolds that probes how far humanity might go when driven by disillusionment and whether any crime can be justified by a higher purpose. Chris Hannan's adaptation of Crime and Punishment was first performed at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, in 2013, followed by a UK tour.

Leseprobe

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

adapted for the stage by

Chris Hannan

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

'Siberia and Back' by Chris Hannan

Characters

Crime and Punishment

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Crime and Punishment was first performed at the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, on 5 September 2013 in a co-production by Citizens Theatre, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse and Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. The cast was as follows:

RASKOLNIKOV

Adam Best

NASTASYA

Mabel Clements

PORFIRY PETROVICH/MARMELADOV

George Costigan

DUNYA

Amiera Darwish

SKABICHEVSKY/LEBEZYATNIKOV

Chris Donald

ALYONA/PULKHERIA/KATERINA/DARYA

Cate Hamer

SONYA

Jessica Hardwick

ILYA PETROVICH

John Paul Hurley

LUZHIN

Jack Lord

RAZUMIKHIN

Obioma Ugoala

All other parts played by members of the Company

Director

Dominic Hill

Designer

Colin Richmond

Lighting Designer

Chris Davey

Composer and Sound Designer

Nikola Kodjabashia

Movement Directors

Lucien MacDougall

Benedicte Seierup

Assistant Director

Danielle McIlven

Design Assistant

Ruth Hall

Casting Director

Kay Magson

The production subsequently toured to the Liverpool Playhouse (1-19 October 2013) and the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh (22 October - 9 November 2013).

Siberia and Back

Few writers had a more dramatic life than Dostoyevsky. As a young man he was involved in a secret revolutionary group, imprisoned, taken out to face a firing squad, then pardoned at the last moment and sent into penal servitude in Siberia, where he worked and slept alongside murderers.

Crime and Punishmentis not autobiographical but it is the writer’s personal experience which accounts for his intimacy with the murderer-hero, and consequently our intimacy. Dostoyevsky the revolutionary had plotted murder for a cause (the liberation of the serfs); and in prison camp he had spoken to a variety of murderers and sensed the different emotions in play – pride, horror, vanity. We get so close to Raskolnikov that we can practically see the proud, desperate, angry look in his eyes.

Crime and Punishmentis crime thriller meets Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. Grounded in the realistic context of a St Petersburg slum, the hero commits murder as a sort of experiment. ‘Have I therightto murder?’ He wants to know. It’s an outrageous premise and could have produced a rather abstract novel of ideas, had it not been written out of the experience of a man who went to Siberia a revolutionary and came backprofoundly changed.

It has been a gift to adapt because Dostoyevsky creates great dramatic scenes and characters who are – at the deepest level – in constant crisis; who are always improvising, like actors searching for moments of truth.

Chris Hannan

Characters

RASKOLNIKOVALYONA IVANOVNANASTASYASEMYON ZAKHAROVICH MARMELADOV LIZAVETAIVANOVNA KOCH SKABICHEVSKY DARYA FRANTSOVNA SONYA MARMELADOVA PORFIRY PETROVICH ILYA PETROVICH PULKHERIA ALEXANDROVNA DUNYA ROMANOVNA RAZUMIKHIN PYOTR PETROVICH LUZHIN KATERINA IVANOVNA DOCTOR PRIEST NIKOLAI LEBEZYATNIKOV AMALIA IVANOVNA

AndCUSTOMERS, STUDENTS, WORKERS, BYSTANDERS, PROSTITUTES.

ACT ONE

Scene One

Out of the Depths

TheCASTenter singing a Russian Orthodox Psalm. They are dressed as their characters – a drunk, a prostitute, a poor gentlewoman and her daughter, a pawnbroker, et cetera.

Out of the depths we cry and we beg you; Lord hear our prayer up above!

Almighty God, have pity upon us Show us the face of your love.

Weary and faint in a land without water Thirsting for you with our soul.

Through the dark night we hope and we pray like Sentries that long for the dawn…

Through the dark night we hope and we pray like Sentries that long for the dawn…

The rest of theCASTexit, leavingRASKOLNIKOValone on stage.

Scene Two

The Idea

RASKOLNIKOVwears a battered top hat; very English. His slept-in coat is the uniform worn by students in nineteenth-century Russia; it has a military touch.

He talks to the audience.

RASKOLNIKOV.When you first consider the idea of murder, there’s a there’s a hesitation.And and also, as for instance if you want to be a poet, almost you can’t take yourself seriously, which makes you angry of course.

Always there’s this voice mocking you.‘You students!’ it says.‘You talk, you want to abolish the law, you want to abolish everything; the longer you talk the less I believe you.Murder?You’re too mediocre to murder.’And to show the voice you’re serious, you count the steps from the door of your tenement garret to the door of the pawnbroker’s.You decide to use an axe.

For a month you are nailed to your bed like you’re sick.You see nobody, eat nothing, sleep without taking your clothes off, argue with the voice.After a while the voice be be begins to say, ‘I’m bored of this, you’re a time-waster; if you’re going to commit murder,get on with it.’

That’s when I decide to go to the pawnbroker’s, as a rehearsal.I want to consider the obstacles.And the first ob the first obstacle to surmount is going outside.There’s nothing funny about it.The landlady is a long story but in brief, I owe her a certain amount of money anunknownamount of money and she lives in the flat below.I’m obliged to creep down the tenement stairs, and that makes me almost physically sick – the idea that I can contemplate murder but am afraid of the landlady.

Scene Three

The Rehearsal

ALYONA IVANOVNAthe pawnbroker’s house.

RASKOLNIKOVrings the bell. He has a feeling inside like he might throw up.ALYONA IVANOVNAanswers the door. She is the middle-class widow of a civil servant; very observant, excellent memory.

RASKOLNIKOV. It’s Raskolnikov, law student former student.Was here a month month or so ago.

ALYONA.Yes.

RASKOLNIKOV.I’ve come for the same thing again.Pawn, et cetera.

ALYONA.Come in.

RASKOLNIKOVgoes in. The sun in the room hurts his eyes.

RASKOLNIKOV.Bright.Sun setting.You must run see the river.

ALYONA. I never look.What have you brought me?

RASKOLNIKOVtakes a watch out of his pocket.

RASKOLNIKOV. This watch.

She takes it and appraises it. By that I don’t mean she casts her eye over it – she has a professional tool; an eyeglass or jeweller’s loupe. She wants to know who made the watch, where, and she’s looking for markings that will tell her that. Like any pawnbroker, her evaluations are based on a detailed knowledge of the market, margins, etc.

It’s engraved on the back, look.A globe.

ALYONA.The last pledge you brought me.Your month’s up.The second of June you pledged it, today’s the fourth of July.

RASKOLNIKOV. I’ll pay another month’s interest.

ALYONA. Now?

RASKOLNIKOV. A day or two.Have some patience, Alyona Ivanovna.

ALYONA. Whether I’m patient or not is my business, law student.I gave you a month and the month’s up.It’s mine now.

RASKOLNIKOV.How much for the watch?

ALYONA.You come with such rubbish.And I’m stupid, I pay too much.

RASKOLNIKOV.Fine watch.I tell you tell you what, I’ll take four roubles for it.

ALYONA.Rouble and a half.

RASKOLNIKOV.It’s my father’s watch.It’s worth atleastfour.

ALYONAstops appraising the watch and hands it back to him.

ALYONA.Well, keep it to remind you of your father and the guidance he gave you as a boy.

ALYONAopens the door to show him out.

RASKOLNIKOV.Rouble, I’ll take rouble and a half.

ALYONAgets her keys out and goes through a cotton curtain hanging in the doorway to a second room, a small boxroom where she keeps the pledges and valuables.

RASKOLNIKOVis listening his head off. He hears her unlocking a chest.

ALYONAcomes back with a rouble and fifteen kopecks.

ALYONA.Interest is ten kopecks to the rouble per month, that’s fifteen kopecks for the watch plus twenty kopecks you owe on the ring is thirty-five kopecks,take away from a rouble and a half for the watch makes one rouble fifteen kopecks.