The Lansing Community College Department of Theatre is preparing to stage an adaptation of the classic novel "Crime and Punishment" later this month.
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s "Crime and Punishment" is regarded as one of the great titles in Russian literature. Published in 1866, it’s the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, a young man who thinks his self-professed superiority gives him the right to commit murder as a means to a greater good. Later, though, his killings produce profound guilt and paranoia.
Marilyn Campbell-Lowe, who studied at Michigan State University and worked for a time at Lansing’s now-defunct professional Boarshead Theatre, was commissioned to write a stage adaptation of this monumental story for the Writers Theatre outside Chicago in 2003.
“It’s been done in over 100 venues. It’s been translated into two languages, Greek and Hungarian. It’s been done in London several times,” she explained. “So, it’s in many ways, really, made my career. It’s taken me everywhere.”
LCC Theatre faculty member Andy Callis is directing the play. He describes this adaption as a whodunit where we know who did it.
“We know whodunit,” he said, “But if you haven’t read it, the specifics are…it’s just very dramatic and exciting to see how it all plays out.”
The cast includes LCC student Simon Rebeck as Raskolnikov, another LCC student Camilla Trudell and former student Will Millstein.
More than 20 years after writing this adaptation, playwright Marilyn Campbell-Lowe sees the story connecting with modern conditions.
People are still committing crimes, she muses, because they think they’re leading the world forward.
“When we put that with corporations and people right now in our government that are acting like they’re not accountable to the law, it resonates in such a strong way," she said.
For many, reading "Crime and Punishment" was a difficult school assignment, maybe even a book they never finished. Campbell-Lowe thinks this 90-minute stage adaptation is another way to connect with Dostoevsky’s masterwork.
"His ideas rang true when it was written. It rang true in 2003 when we did it, and it’s ringing even more relevant today because of the ideas that he explores in the story.”
Director Andy Callis admires Campbell-Lowe’s adaptation, saying her script captures not only the practical choices Raskolnikov has but his spiritual choices as well.
“How is he going to see himself? How is he going to see the world?” he asked. “I think that it is a hopeful ending, not a cliched happy ending, but the question at the heart of the play, there’s some hope to it.”
The LCC production of "Crime and Punishment" opens February 21 for five performances in the Gannon Building’s Black Box Theatre. The playwright will give a preview talk before the opening night show.
