Photos: Crime And Punishment
NEW YORK – To share an exceptional production of its 2023 Nyack-based Phoenix Live Arts Festival with the wider NYC audience, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, led by Craig Smith and Elise Stone, will present its mounting of the Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” from January 19 to 28, 2024 at Gural Theatre of A.R.T/New York Theatres, 502 West 53rd Street. The production compresses the tension and pathos of the famed Russian novel into a powerful 90 minute, three-actor play that is at once fresh and faithful to the original. Karen Case Cook directs.
Presented this fall (September 28 to October 1, 2023) to lead off the Second Phoenix Live Arts Festival in Nyack, NY, “Crime and Punishment” charmed its audiences and wowed the critics. Darryl Reilly called it “a towering purely theatrical incarnation!” and selected it this month for his “Best Ten” list in Theaterscene.org. Theater Pizzazz (Melissa Griegel) heaped praise on the “one-of-a-kind performance” and its three actors, Josh Tyson, John Lenartz and Elise Stone.
Often spoken of as the greatest crime story ever written, Dostoyevsky’s novel is a tale of murder, motive and redemption that plumbs the depths of the human soul. For modern audiences, imagine a 19th-century Tony Soprano named Raskolnikov who fancies himself above the law – entitled to such an extent that he may decide who is worthy of life and of death. But that all ends when he meets his match in Inspector Porfiry, a master of mind games who is determined to elicit a confession from the ever-more-demented Raskolnikov.
This production, directed by Karen Case Cook, is staged in minimalist style on a stripped-down set consisting of three sleek bench seats. Josh Tyson plays Raskolinkov, the murderer of pawnbroker Alyona Ivanova and her sister Lizaveta. He is on stage for the entire play. Elise Stone changes costumes and mannerisms to play Raskolinkov’s love Sonia, who has been forced into prostitution to help support her family, as well as Sonia’s pawnbroker mother and sister, and Raskolinkov’s mother. John Lenartz plays the canny inspector Porfiry Petrovich as well as all the other male roles.
The production team includes Buffy Cardoza (Props Designer), Debbi Hobson (Costume Designer), Ellen Mandel (Sound Designer), Bill Schmidt (Lighting Designer) and Safe and Sound, LLC (Sound Engineering).
This distilled adaptation was originally commissioned by Writer’s Theatre in Glenco, IL, where it premiered in 2003. Reviewing a mounting of the play in 2007 at 59E59 Theatres, Neil Genzlinger wrote in the New York Times, “Crime and Punishment, in a feat that rivals the construction of the Hoover Dam, has been distilled into a taut 90-minute play by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus. Just three actors tell the tale and may have you confessing to some murders yourself by the play’s end.”
Phoenix Theatre is actually transplanting two leading productions of its 2023 Phoenix Live Arts Festival to NYC this season, naming the pair of productions its Winter Rep. “Crime and Punishment” (January19 to 28 ) will be followed by “Drinks With Dead Poets,” written by Glyn Maxwell, directed by Attilio Rigotti (February 2 to 11) acted by John Lenartz, Antonio Edwards Suarez and Elise Stone. Both productions will take stage in the Gural Theatre of A.R.T/New York Theatres, 502 West 53rd Street. In “Drinks With Dead Poets” Glyn Maxwell, the Olivier Award-nominated author, playwright and poet, adapts his celebrated 2017 novel into a 60-minute theater production. On a strange day in Nyack, America’s last library is being demolished and the last votes are being counted in the last election ever. Maxwell, an English Professor – well, a professor who is English – wanders into a pub and thinks he recognizes certain dead poets at the bar. Will he get served? Will America get saved? At this point in history, he’ll settle for either one. The audience gets to pass a pleasant evening with poets, ghosts and the end of the world. (Schedule & tickets: https://www.phoenixtheatreensemble.org/calendar)
ABOUT PHOENIX LIVE ARTS FESTIVAL
The Phoenix Festival is an annual celebration of arts and culture with live performances in Rockland County, NY, led by the award-winning Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. It was begun in 2022, with the aspiration to create an arts festival to rival the national arts festivals, celebrating classical theater, classical music and the community of Nyack. Presented during the Hudson Valley Fall Foliage season, the festival has featured world-class theater, music, dance, family shows, one-of-a-kind performances and special events all over downtown Nyack. Over 25 local businesses have participated as festival sponsors. The number of presentations grew this year from six to ten and mainstage productions increased from three to four. (https://liveartsinnyack.com)
ABOUT PHOENIX THEATRE ENSEMBLE
Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, led by Craig Smith and Elise Stone, is a prestigious, award-winning not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization committed to classics and new adaptations of language-rich texts. Founded in Manhattan in 2004, the troupe expanded programming to include Nyack in 2018 and has been producing in both locations. The organization nurtures a diverse resident company of classically trained and highly skilled theater artists and has been honored in recent years with Audelco, IRNE, Elliot Norton and New York Innovative Theatre Awards. It is dedicated to an ensemble-driven process in which actors, directors, playwrights and designers are equal collaborators. (https://www.phoenixtheatreensemble.org)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Phoenix Theatre Ensemble productions and programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Its ensemble programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
