THE DREAM OF A RIDICULOUS MAN at the Marylebone Theatre

★★★★

“a stark parable of hope for post-Covid Britain”

In these post-Covid years, one might very well question the merits of paying to see the monologic disillusionment of a lonely man played out on stage. Indeed, one would be forgiven for mistaking Laurence Boswell’s ‘The Dream of a Ridiculous Man’ (newly adapted for the Marylebone Theatre from Dostoyevsky’s novella of the same name) for advertising itself as doing just that.

Boswell puts his idea for the inception of the play down to long walks towards the end of the Covid pandemic. It was then that he began to contemplate Dostoyevsky’s story as having vital resonances to the peculiar cultural context of the post-pandemic years. This spurred his decision to transplant the play and its one-man protagonist, played by Greg Hicks, to the Hackney of the modern day.

The play begins with Hicks soliloquising upon a tale of life as a ‘meaningless accident in an indifferent and seemingly meaningless universe’. The account of this tale eventually brings him to the point of suicide, before he collapses into a sleep. As he sleeps he begins to dream of a surreal utopian world which comes to redefine his perspective on the realities of his own life. The volte face which plays out in Hicks’ mind brilliantly manifests itself in the intimate surroundings of the stage. Much of this effect hinges upon the dynamism and vitality of his performance, while its structure is underpinned by Boswell’s careful rendering of Dostoyevsky’s prose for performance.

Perhaps the only notable area where Boswell’s adaptation falls short lies in the, admittedly difficult, task of capturing the original text’s peculiarly risible quality. Translated literally, Dostoyevsky’s Russian title, Сон смешного человека, reads as ‘A Funny Man’s Dream’. Mikhail Bakhtin famously posited the story’s place as a model late 19th century example of Menippean satire, citing the ultimately playful undertone of the protagonist’s revelatory dream and the action which follows. Hicks’ performance lends itself more towards serious philosophical contemplation than the more surreal or farcical interpretations of the original, though this is not altogether to the diminution of the play’s dramatic effect.

Indeed, Hicks remains, necessarily, the sustaining force of the play, and moments of exposition or extended speech are deployed economically. Moreover, there is much to be said for the production’s remarkably deft means of expressing the philosophical pertinences of Dostoyevsky’s novella wordlessly. From the complementarily layered approach to costume (Caroline Stevens) and lighting (Ben Ormerod) to demarcate between the protagonist’s states of consciousness, to Gary Sefton’s similarly effective direction of Hicks’ movement and positioning on the stage. Each of these components works seamlessly to shift the production’s mise en scène and mood without slipping into ungainly segues in scene or prop changes.

The overarching potentiality of the production lies in the very fact that it tends ultimately not towards nihilism but hope. Indeed, the play presents an inversion of ‘nihilistic’ narratives reminiscent of its opening scene, such as Dürrenmatt’s ‘The Physicist’, or Büchner’s ‘Woyzeck’. Instead its plot centres upon a spiritual ascent from, rather than a psychological downward-spiral toward, an individual’s state of meaninglessness.

The combined efforts of Boswell and his creative team result in a set (Loren Elstein) of deft minimalism, capable of facilitating the play’s characteristically Dostoyevskian dialogue between themes of social realism and individual imagination. The result is a play which effectively expresses the principles of its inspiration. In Boswell’s programme notes, he writes of Dostoyevsky’s story as an homage to the human capacity to create stories. The play’s defining impetus lies in visually exploring the limits of this capacity. In doing so, it prompts a fundamental further contemplation, namely ‘that beyond thinking we might see’ different consciousnesses, and come to believe in bolder realities, than our own. Boswell has managed to repurpose Dostoyevsky’s original into a stark parable of hope for post-Covid Britain