Detroit Free Press, June 08, 2005
Somber 'Karamazov' a complex drama
By: Martin F. Kohn
Two types of audiences are most likely to see "The Brothers Karamazov" at Stratford. The first group would be fans of the Dostoevsky novel.
The second would be those expecting to see those zany jugglers.
Sorry, friends. The jugglers are the Flying Karamazov Brothers. If you want to see them, wait until Nov. 6 when they're scheduled to play the Macomb Center.
Come to think of it, Jason Sherman's dense dramatization of Dostoevsky is a juggling act. All those characters, all those story lines, all that moral, religious and social philosophy, all the flashbacks, all those overturned chairs that symbolize ... something.
Not to mention the whodunit. Somebody killed old man Fyodor Karamazov and the suspects include his four sons: Dmitry, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov.
Hotheaded Dmitry is the likeliest suspect; he and his father were pursuing the same woman, Grushenka. But Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son, has his reasons. His father treated him like dirt. Besides, an old family retainer, Grigory, remembers that Smerdyakov used to torture cats.
And Ivan is feeling guilty, too.
It's complicated. "Everything seems to be happening at once," says Grushenka.
Sherman, a leading Canadian playwright, has handed himself a difficult assignment -- there's so much to put in, so much to leave out. He doesn't let go easily: Sherman has put a few excised speeches into the playbill.
Richard Rose's staging sets a somber mood, enhanced by Charlotte Dean's dark costumes and a number of songs in Russian, sung in pleasing harmony by cast members.
Scott Wentworth is the perfect old reprobate as Fyodor. The play begins with Fyodor's funeral but we see a lot of him in flashback. Sometimes it's difficult to know who is who, but that isn't the case with the brothers, thanks to the clearly defined performances of Shane Carty (Ivan), Jonathan Goad (Dmitry), Ron Kennell (Smerdyakov) and Peter van Gestel (Alyosha). They're no jugglers but they give the production a sense of balance.