Review: The Brothers Karamazov – Tron Theatre, Glasgow

First published in The Times, Monday October 16 2017

Two Stars

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to condense a 900-page novel into a two-hour play. Richard Crane’s venerable stage adaptation of Dostoevsky is all the more intriguing when you consider that, in his version, only four actors enact the Russian master’s sprawling, densely populated saga.

 

Crane’s dramatisation was commissioned for the Edinburgh International Festival in 1981, with Alan Rickman and Peter Kelly among the original cast. This revival at the Tron reunites the script with Faynia Williams, Crane’s partner in the Brighton Theatre, and the director of that first production.