When Nancy Harris’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s 1889 novella was first seen at London’s Gate in 2009, it seemed to miss some of the madness that permeated the story.
But that has now been rectified in John Terry’s excellent revival, which yields an astonishing performance from Greg Hicks: one that reminded me of his Leontes in The Winter’s Tale in that it offers a riveting portrait of a mind diseased by sexual jealousy.
Hicks plays a Russian civil servant who buttonholes his companion on a train journey to confess to a terrible crime. With his seamed features, darting eyes and constant flexing of his fingers, Hicks suggests a man torn, not unlike one of our recent political leaders, between moral guilt and belief in the invincible logic of his actions. We become the storyteller’s audience as he outlines his rooted misogyny, his fierce sexual drive and his love-hate relationship with his wife. But the tipping point comes when his piano-loving wife starts playing duets with a neighbouring violinist. Hicks captures perfectly the insanity that leads the husband to see every gesture – even the violinist’s removal of his “stringed appendage” from its case – as a sign of sexual aggression.
Music, which Tolstoy saw as dangerously hypnotic, is crucial to the action and it helps that Harry Sever’s Beethoven-influenced score is played on stage by Alice Pinto and Phillip Granell. But the success of the evening depends on Hicks, who, in charting the paranoia of a man driven to murder, confirms his matchless gift for exploring unbalanced minds.
• At Arcola theatre, London, until 23 July. Box office: 020-7503 1646.
