Well my reading marathon of Dostoevsky's The Idiot paid off. ...some trace of her, which was inspired by the novel was breathtaking, frustrating, fascinating, distracting and utterly engaging all at the same time.
I actually left the theatre feeling a bit shaky.
But how can I describe a performance unlike anything I've ever seen before? I can't hope to do it justice but I will at least try.
If you imagine a film set. A black and white movie. And it is being acted, lit, shot and sound recorded on a stage in front of you while simultaneously being editing and projected onto a screen hanging above the stage you get a bit of the idea.
There were no technical crew on stage though. It was all done by the actors with choreographed precision. (And live musician's back stage.)
At any one time three people could be playing in a shot. For example there was a scene where Prince Myshkin played by the once again far too talented Ben Whishaw is eating soup while deep in thought. Someone is filmed filling the soup spoon with soup and lifting it as though to their mouth, stage right while stage left, Whishaw completes the action lifting a soup spoon to his mouth and eating it. In the centre a third actor provides a voice to Myshkin's thoughts.
It is all instantly edited together so that on screen you are watching the Prince eat soup and listening to his thoughts.
At the same time the remaining actors are providing necessary sound effects and rapidly setting up for the next scene. In a film, each scene would be shot perspective by perspective then edited together at a later stage.
It all sounds a little chaotic and it was at times and quite distracting. Sitting close to the front, as I was, you are level with the stage so you did get sucked into what was happening there rather than watching it all come together on screen.
But it ached with cleverness at times. The sheer imagination and organisation and not forgetting the performances as there often wasn't another actor to play off.
Critics of it argue that you go the theatre to see the actors and it was difficult to see them in the flesh at times with lighting rigs, props and off-scene actors dodging about, especially as the stage had low lighting so as not to interfere with the 'film' lighting. But the thrill of the live performance was magnified by the fact that there were so many different technical elements all coming together at once right before your very eyes.
Katie Mitchell who wrote and directed has chosen to pick out the bare bones of the novel's story and pieced together its overall themes using a series of very loosely connected set pieces. There is little conversation and a lot of monologue.
A lot of the Dostoevsky's characters have been jettisoned to concentrate on the love triangle between the central characters. And that isn't a great shame, but I felt the Aglaya character who serves to complicate the love triangle in the book was introduced a little too late and the character underplayed.
One or two characters also seem to pop up randomly and this is where the background knowledge of the novel certainly helped to add to some context.
So it certainly wasn't without its floors. But the thrill of the live performance certainly made up for it.