A plain table; a bare mattress on a bare floor; a metal stool and a plain chair; books falling over in the corner; discarded plastic bins. It could be a room like that of any slovenly student in any gloomy city in any nondescript country—perhaps behind an Iron Curtain? Except that it's all covered in a thick layer of snow. And the story dates from the 1860's. And the man who lives here is 40. And as he begins to address us, it quickly becomes clear he's no ordinary recluse and this ordinary room represents no ordinary place.
For this is Dostoevsky's grim novella Notes from Underground, blasted to unexpectedly brilliant life in a stage adaptation by Robert Woodruff and the amazing actor Bill Camp. Accompanied by two actor-musicians who position themselves stage left and right behind assorted instruments, Mr. Camp wanders casually onstage, sits at his table and takes a drink. The female musician tunes a banjo.
At last night's performance, a man in the audience blew his nose at this moment. Camp acknowledged him with a chuckle. We were pulled in right away.
But into what? Were we in for a gussied-up solo reading like something Spaulding Gray might have done, but with a set? The Man sets up a small camera on the table and checks the angle of his face, projected huge on a rear wall. And he begins to pontificate about consciousness, and himself, and what profits man, and himself, and how horrible it would be to surrender to determinism, to the "laws of nature"—and himself. We follow him because of the great novelist's never-equalled skill with words. (The adaptation is based on the superb translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.)
And then slowly it's the actor's mesmeric pull taking over. He poses a test: "Is it possible to be perfectly candid with oneself?" He sets out to try. Projections of drab corridors and frantic drives and unbearable social events accompany the story as the Man leaves behind the expository section and begins his actual "notes" about events from 14 years before, when he imposed himself on an unwilling dinner party only to be humiliated, then found himself with a prostitute, Liza, played by the starkly effective Merritt Janson (the abovementioned female musician).
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