Adapting “The Brothers Karamazov”, Dostoyevsky’s enormous novel (1300 pages), to the theater, might seem like an impossible challenge that Sylvain Creuzevault has cheerfully taken up. And with humor, as surprising as it may seem! Because, everyone really laughed during his 3:15 show where it seems impossible to get bored for a single moment!
Admittedly, this adaptation is very personal, but we totally adhere to it!
And with admiration! Especially since the performers are all excellent: they themselves, for the most part, participated in this look at the ultimate work of the great Russian author, all gathered to improvise in a country building in the center of France.
The “Karamazov Brothers” are four: Dimitri the exalted, Alexis the mystic, Ivan the nationalist fanatic, and Alyosha the illegitimate son. They did not grow up together and find themselves reunited for the first time. Rather than a real father, the ignoble Fyodor (Patrick Pineau) is more of the progenitor. It is said that Dostoyevsky was thinking of his own father when portraying this man, pleasure-loving and irascible.
The very tense relationship between the father and the eldest son is encumbered by a duality that moves people and makes them laugh, because humor insinuates itself everywhere to make the play a tragicomedy brimming with energy.
“The Brothers Karamazov” is above all a devastating farce, an enormous buffoonery to tell a fascinating crime.
Sylvain Creuzevault not only adapted the novel, but he made a very original and very agitated staging, constantly coming up against characters of an all-Russian hysteria. In addition, he plays Ivan. When Alyosha (Arthur Igual) murders the father, it is to please Ivan believing he is obeying his secret desire. And this is Dmitri (Vladislav Galard) who is charged with the murder. Be that as it may, everyone is affected by this death that everyone has wished for in their own way.
The story is dominated by the problems of God and seduction: Christ and Grushenka. Bitch, animal, saint, Grouchenka brings together in her the multiple contradictions of woman. It is madness made flesh. And Servane Ducorps interprets it wonderfully with sliding looks and adequate facial expressions.
Alyosha has a quiet faith “ it is not faith that is born from the miracle, it is the miracle that is born from faith he says. At the same time, spiritual guide and surrogate father, the staretz Zossima (Sava Lolov) protects him and, like him, he bathes in the same blissful light. But when he dies, the corpse of this man of God begins to stink rather than give off an odor of holiness, as everyone would have supposed.
The voluminous book has obviously suffered many cuts, it could not have been otherwise, but the essential is there and the spirit of the book (translated by André Markovicz) is preserved in this contemporary approach.
The investigation disturbs the certainties: the actions, the motives, the characters, open to all kinds of contradictions. Even justice, during Dimitri’s trial, shows all the contradictions in its functioning. ” The Prosecutor explains the motives… and the lawyer, just as sagacious, gives them the opposite meaning ” wrote John Genet in a very beautiful text on his reading of the novel where he detected the “jubilation” of Dostoyevsky.
We, our jubilation was to attend such a masterful, rich, free and joyful show! Our enthusiasm is total!
Caroline Boudet Lefort
Photo of a: Visual of a DR ANTHEA
ANTHEA – The Karamazov brothers, by Sylvain Creuzevault: (…) – Art Côte d’Azur