By Carol Davis
LA JOLLA, California — The Yale Repertory Theatre production of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is a trip many might not want to take. For those who do, it’s at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Stage of the La Jolla Playhouse.
It is based on the 1864 novella by Dostoevsky, adapted by long time 80’s favorite teacher, director (Brecht’s “A Man’s A Man”) and actor Robert Woodruff (who has gone on to make an international name for himself) and actor Bill Camp (he’s the main guy) and is directed by Woodruff. It is the translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volohonsky. The running time is about 96 minutes give or take a day.
Let’s put it this way it’s not Limelight the musical that is playing across the campus of UCSD that is but a short walk away. The comparison is a choice between listening to fingernails on a chalkboard, to watching a Charlie Chaplin look a like perform. You pick (or not) your own weapon.
It is hailed as a tour de force for Camp, and I won’t take that away from him. His performance is exhausting, but spot on perfect.
Bill Camp’s Man was a Russian civil servant who left his job and went underground to get away from it all and live alone because he hated the corruption he saw from his window of the world. How he thought he could work through this from his underground hide-a-way is beyond any rationale. But there ya go! There is no rationale.
More than that though his paranoia of blaming his fellow employees for everything from tormenting him to causing him convulsions is beyond the talking stages. When he inherited some money from a relative, he left his job “and settled in my corner”.
He then drives himself crazy over everything from the climate in St. Petersburg to feeling like an insect. As a result of his delusions and enraged feelings toward his fellow man and everything else for that matter, he keeps sinking deeper into his depression.
Watching him spiral downward in his underground bunker complete with snow (David Zinn) covering the floor and desktops, thrown about and broken down furniture, empty soda cans and water bottles (they updated the piece to take place in a modern transit office) chairs tossed here and there and a small cam cord to record himself, was about the most grisly, interminable and gruesome a theatre experience I’ve had in well, a long while.
In a recent interview, the Playhouses artistic director Christopher Ashley is quoted as saying “the theatre’s mission statement proclaims it’s a ‘safe place for the unsafe’ to be explored”. Nothing could be closer to the truth than this particular play. It’s an E ticket ride fraught with more danger than the Matterhorn on your first go around and one more disturbing than watching the 1948 movie “Snake Pit”.
The Man’s travels take him and us through his agonizing, soulful and self-loathing thoughts as to how many ways to be angry and to isolate yourself from just about everything and everyone while longing for some human contact. “I am a sick man. I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts. I’ve been living like this for a long time—about twenty years. I used to be in the civil service; I’m not now”, and the rants go on.
After some time elapses his wanderings move to a story he wants us to hear. He begins to relate to (anyone) us about a dinner he had invited himself to with some of his old school buddies and how he was mistreated, given the wrong information about when to meet and then being shut out of the so called civilities.
He becomes agitated when none of them pay him any attention, in fact ignoring him. He becomes annoyed at himself for even asking to be included. He goes on and on and the mood gets darker and darker and the more he rants the more he hates them for who they are.
In the middle of this rage we get to see (by over head projections) some of his friends’ sexual antics at this gathering that he had so latched himself on to. Once again he becomes so infuriated for not being included that he takes the prostitute, Liza (Merritt Janson who is also one of the two musicians) and manages to woo her on the one hand and completely destroy (read brutally rape) her both physically and mentally on the other. It is not a pretty sight and it is at this point, some in the audience were inclined to leave.
That there are those who feel less than human and alienated and scream to be recognized is a fact. They are just as easily on a self-destruct, self-loathing course with contempt for themselves as is this character called Man. This ‘walk on the dark side’ with Man will give you an insight into one man’s journey into his own hell.
The experience however, of sitting through such a journey is brutal and I would warn those who ask to enter at their own risk.
That said, Camp and Woodruff really push the envelope and anyone wanting an alternative theatre experience should look no further. Camp’s performance never faulted nor did he falter. His performance, both physical and mental was an amazing fête of concentration, agility and strength.
See you at the theatre.
Dates: September 24th –October 17th
Organization: La Jolla Playhouse
Phone: 858-550-1010
Production Type: Drama
Where: 2910 La Jolla Village Drive, La Jolla CA 92037
Ticket Prices: $31.00-$66.00
Web: lajollaplayhouse.org
Venue: Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre
*
Theatre critic Davis is based in San Diego