Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Adam Best, Mabel Clements, George Costigan, Amiera Darwish, Chris Donald, Cate Hamer, Jessica Hardwick, John Paul Hurley, Jack Lord, Obioma Ugoala.

There are moments in theatre where the ugly head of jealousy might just rear up within an audience member and show the person what they could have achieved if they were so minded. The chance to write, direct or even perform in a production of Crime And Punishment that is so magnificent, so constant in its relentless look at the way poverty, crime and descending psychosis, that even to have pulled the curtain up at the start of the play would have been an enormous thrill.

However, to sit in and watch Adam Best as former law student Raskolnikov contemplate the rights and wrongs of murder and his slow descent into further self-loathing and mad-man like philosophy was as near to theatre magnificence as you would ever likely to ever see.  There have been so many incredible performances on the stage at The Playhouse Theatre, even since the turn of the new century, however watching through the rising mists, the steam which made the blood run cold at the serial like monologues in which the murderer justifies his actions and the insane rationale in which he contemplates killing again was just theatrical brilliance.

Crime and Punishment is rightly considered a gem, a murder mystery in which the loose threads of social depravity and want go hand in hand with the main plot’s look at life through a killers eyes. To try and transfer it to the stage take huge ambition and incredible skill and for that, not only do the cast deserve much praise, notably George Costigan in tremendous and playful form as both Porfiry Petrovich and the drunken and defeated Marmeladov and the superb Jessica Hardwick as Mareladov’s prostitute daughter Sonya, but the vision of writer Chris Hannan, the exceptional directing of Dominic Hill and the absolute conviction that the entire company had in making Crime and Punishment a play that rewards the audience with its poetic like monologues, timing and interaction.

To witness a play of this magnitude being performed, a production that asks the question of morality and where the lines are drawn should be considered a valuable use of anyone’s time. It would be criminal to miss it.

Ian D. Hall