Theater: La MaMa E.T.C. / 74A East Fourth Street, New York, NY, 10003
Synopsis:
A man boards a train and in the confined space of the carriage potent memories are triggered. Soon he is confessing to a terrible crime, one for which he holds Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata responsible.
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March 11, 2012: He cannot stop talking, this stranger on a train. And though much of what he says isn’t pleasant, you can’t stop listening, either. There is, after all, something mesmerizing about confession in a smoky railroad car, delivered by someone you’ll never see again.
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March 11, 2012: You’ll never hear Beethoven’s erotically charged piece of music the same way after seeing “The Kreutzer Sonata.”
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March 11, 2012: Want to spend an hour in a cramped compartment as a sweaty, misogynistic boor rants at you? No, they’re not hiring at The Rush Limbaugh Show; the gentlemen in question is Pozdynyshev, a smugly cynical Muscovite who regales his railway companions (us) with the sordid, downward course of his marriage. Based on a sensational yet moralizing 1889 novella by Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata comes to La MaMa by way of London’s intimate Gate Theatre, a monologue with music that makes for a diverting tour through the male mind riven by lust, disgust and guilt.
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March 11, 2012: Any adaptation of Tolstoy's short story "The Kreutzer Sonata" has set the bar rather high for itself, because it takes as its subject material not just one of the best examples of an acknowledged master's medium of choice but one of the greatest short stories (well, novellas) ever written. Nancy Harris' 80-minute script for the Gate Theatre's production at La MaMa, here from London making its American debut, does exactly what an adaptation should do: avoids worrying about whether or not it's being faithful enough and simply tells us the story. This puts the audience in the position of the narrator in the original work and puts the astonishing Hilton McRae in the driver's seat.
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March 12, 2012: Jealous passion and brutal sexual energy course just underneath the surface of The Kreutzer Sonata, now playing at La MaMa E.T.C.. But this production, which has come to New York from the U.K.'s Gate Theatre, also boasts a surprising, and thoroughly engaging delicacy and subtlety.
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