Crime and Punishment

It’s dry. The forced perspective is harsh. Dust and plaster are piled around a dark, drab space. And there’s a man lying there in dreary, heavily worn garments. Look closely and you’ll see he’s breathing. Most people don’t seem to notice until they sit down.

The lights fall into complete darkness. They rise. There are two men there. One of them faces the audience. The way he’s sitting looks very uncomfortable, but not in any earthly way. He should be uncomfortable — he’s Raskolnikov, tragic protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s shadowy, voluminous novel, played by Mic Matarrese. He’s just killed two people. Everyone in the Broadway Theatre Center’s Studio Theatre seems to know this but him. This is no mystery. He’s aware of what he’s done – he just doesn’t know what to do about it.

There’s a voice. It asks Raskolnikov if he believes in the story of Lazarus: resurrection. The voice is that of Drew Brhel playing Profiry — a man investigating a pair of murders. His back is to the audience, but we get to see a great deal of him in this play: he makes up a third of the cast. The third cast member plays multiple roles. Her name is Leah Dutchin. She plays both of Raskolnikov’s victims and one of the main reasons for the murders. Dutchin brings a memorable female strength to the play.

The drama runs its course as we see the layers of the murderer’s psyche gradually pulled back to reveal the complexity of his actions. Invariably, some of the complexity of the novel has been eliminated in the adaptation, but with only three central characters in the play, we get an interesting dissection of the act of murder. In a brief conversation, Director Patrick Holland compares TV’s Law & Order and the Christopher Nolan film Memento to Crime and Punishment, and while there are definite echoes of modern popular crime drama in this Milwaukee Chamber production, something infinitely classier is going on here. The knowing questioning of Drew Brhel, paired with expert lighting and the sound design, evokes Alfred Hitchcock. The concept of murder infuses every single line of the play, but it’s rarely spoken about directly. When it is – especially in Brhel’s galvanizing voice – we see more shades of Hitchcockian drama.

The wicked forced perspective of Pitts’ clever set is pushed and stretched in so many places. Leah Dutchin appears in doors that once were walls. The doors are everywhere, constantly opening to remind Raskolnikov of something he desperately wants to forget. There’s an ebb and flow to the action. Moments of fragile peace are shattered every time the wall opens to reveal another door. Things don’t truly settle down until the end. The last door opens and a piercing light cuts through it all. Maybe it never seemed important until that final moment, but this is a physically dark play as well. We see things moving around in dust and shadow for the entire 90 minutes without intermission. Then there’s that last moment. The light is bracing — almost painful, but cleansing. VS

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre’s production ofCrime and Punishment runs through March 9. Tickets can be purchased by calling the ticket office at 414-291-7800 or online.