The Studio, Edinburgh
Three stars
Raskolnikov is a man alone in Laurie Sansom’s new adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 750 page nineteenth century epic, which sees the ascetic student’s attraction to seemingly mindless violence usher him into a moral maze that becomes a dark investigation of his inner soul. In Connor Curren’s mercurial portrayal, Raskolnikov is what newspaper reports might call a loner, who lives largely in his own head, plotting and scheming the downfall of everyone who isn’t him. When he kills, it comes from a mixture of thinking he’s better than his victims that runs parallel with a pathological envy of those in high places he so craves to sit among even as he loathes them.
Performed by just three actors in Sansom’s own production for the Yorkshire based Northern Broadsides company, this is Dostoevsky stripped bare. This is the case both in the focus on Raskolnikov’s angry young man style sense of superiority, as well as the way it leaves its chief protagonist’s self absorbed pseudo intellectual mix of nihilism and narcissism exposed.
The latter comes mainly from Raskolnikov’s internal monologues as he flies solo, marking out his destiny step by deadly step. Curren delivers these with an electric flourish as he paces the lamp lit bedsit land of Rose Revitt’s set that marks out his territory in black and white. Having just Trudy Akobeng and Niall Costigan play all other parts shows just how small Raskolnikov’s world is. Beyond the versatility of the actors playing them, everyone looks the same to him, and needs to be treated with the same contempt.
If Akobeng’s Sonya offers some kind of salvation, Raskolnikov’s intellectual sparring with Costigan’s detective Porfiry usurps it. Their elliptical exchange resembles something from a 1960s spy thriller, with Philip Pinsky’s moody score adding to the effect. In the end, like so many lost generations gone rogue before and since, it is a lack of something to believe in amidst the seemingly corrupt world around him that provokes Raskolnikov’s solitary actions. The result is a slow burning excavation of a killer’s mind.
The Herald, April 6th 2026
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