Bad Play in Manhattan

The Possessed (chiefly based on Dostoevsky's novel, adapted by George Shdan-off; produced by Chekhov Theatre Productions, Inc.). Ever since Dostoevsky first published his great novels, playwrights have gone about dramatizing them. The lure of powerful scenes, extraordinary characters, exciting dialogue is understandable but dangerous.

Last week Director Michael Chekhov, nephew of famed Playwright Anton Chekhov, offered a dramatization of Dostoevsky's The Possessed. Probably the worst of all attempts to put Dostoevsky on the stage, it reduced the vast forest of his imagination to dead, sapless stumps. One grotesque, blighted scene followed another. The hero Stavrogin--one of the most astounding characters in fiction--became any confused young intellectual seeking an answer to life. The answer itself was pared down to a kind of Dos-toevsky-for-Tots.

At the mercy of a muddled playwright and an arty director, a not untalented cast was doomed from the start. Apparently assuming that twisted bodies mean twisted souls, they writhed like the Laocoon group. A revolutionary solemnly announced that only a small part of the human race have their heads cut off. The villain twitched about the stage like Mephistopheles with a tic. The audience half expected Fannie Brice to burst in, roll her eyes, and mutter as she did of yore: "It is always c-o-old in Roosia."

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