ADAPTED, directed, and designed by Jon Pope from the prose piece by
Dostoevsky this Citizens' Theatre Company play hammers home the message
''just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get
you''.
While civil servant Jacob Golyadkin (Brendan Hooper) is clearly acting
in a bizarre fashion -- driving round town in a crested carriage and
hiding in a dirty broom cupboard before gatecrashing a high-society
party -- it is also undeniable that those around him are behaving oddly
too.
When a doppelganger appears on the scene Jacob's colleagues and his
servant Petrushka act as if this is nothing untoward, their nonchalance
exacerbating Jacob's anxieties. So, is Jacob unhinged, is he the victim
of a conspiracy, or is he imagining the whole business?
Dostoevsky's ambiguity is accentuated in Pope's production, where
Beatrice Comins and Michelle Gomez, visitors in the night, are
supercilious narrators whose appearance constantly fluctuates; from
period corseted gowns to futuristic silver trenchcoats, changing into
sober dresscoats at a point when Jacob's sanity is most in doubt.
Pope has fun dropping little hints that challenge the status quo but
the symbolism is irritatingly over-emphatic, with Comins and Gomez
distractedly playing out voodoo rituals while in character as Jacob's
doctor or boss.
Quirky touches like the doppleganger (Eric MacLennan) presenting Jacob
with a musical card which plays La Bamba and imitating the National
Lottery pointing finger are amusing but dreadfully pointless and Pope's
tongue-in-cheek approach tips the play into a wilful obscurantism which,
while visually engaging, is -- until a final, successfully chilling
moment -- vapid.
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