New Play in Manhattan

Crime and Punishment (adapted from Dostoevsky's novel by Rodney Ackland; produced by Robert Whitehead & Oliver Rea) is perhaps too great a novel to be tampered with. But by the same token it would seem able to withstand a lot of tampering. Dostoevsky's great study of crime and punishment is also a tense story of crime and detection. Before its arrogant Nietzschean murderer Raskolnikov (John Gielgud) is guided toward confession and atonement by a humble Christian prostitute (Dolly Haas), he is played with, cat-&-mouse, by the Moscow police.

Last week's stage version managed to bury not only the deeper half but the whole of Dostoevsky's novel--giving it, as the only compensation, a highly picturesque funeral. Actor Gielgud's Raskolnikov can be enjoyed as a brilliantly mannered performance, but as a portrait it is worthless. Ackland's stage piece itself is like a translation that inserts innumerable adjectives while omitting all the verbs; it substitutes atmosphere for action, and theatrical color for dramatic force. The stage set--a cross-section of Raskolnikov's swarming rooming house--is a fine device for squeezing in a lot of stray incident, but it virtually squeezes out Raskolnikov. Thick with debris that chokes the main story, full of garish gloom that feasts the eye but starves the emotions, Crime and Punishment winds up a bore.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.