The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoyevsky adapted by Laurence Boswell. The Marylebone Theatre, 36 Park Road, London NW1 to 30 April 2025. 4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.
Photo Credit: Mark Senior.
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man by Fyodor Dostoyevsky adapted by Laurence Boswell. The Marylebone Theatre, 36 Park Road, London NW1 to 30 April 2025.
4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.
“Greg Hicks stunning as the ridiculous man.”
Greg Hicks’ performs the monologue Laurence Boswell has crafted from Dostoyevsky’s story, which he has translated from 19th Century Russia to present day London, with consummate skill. As a story about society corrupted it works beautifully and with only a suitcase as a prop Hicks stalks the bare stage – there is a backcloth of black curtains which become transparent, some intriguing lighting effects, and eventually everything opens up on a world of devastation with in a far corner a banner twisting in the wind – telling of his dream. The man is now living in Hackney, works in a bookshop and is thinking of suicide so despairing is he of the world. He meets a young refugee girl who is lost but cannot help her and then has a dream about an ideal land into which he introduces how to lie and this Eden becomes our world today. But he believes he can help it become what it once was – paradise - and will go on searching for the girl. Hicks brings his story to life with consummate skill. He creates a shambling, badly dressed figure, somebody one would pass on the street without a second glance, a man burning with a passion and horror at what he sees as the meaninglessness of life until he discovers that maybe the universe is not malevolent, that there is hope. But make of it what you will. One of the results of rising costs in the aftermath of the pandemic is that one person shows like this are becoming quite common – Hicks’ performance puts it up there among those at the top of the list plus the fact it has been staged with great imagination so that the stage is never empty, a whole world is conjured there. It is not just one man talking to an audience although that is what it is.
Cast
Greg Hicks
Creatives
Director – Laurence Boswell.
Designer – Loren Elstein.
Lighting Designer – Ben Ormerod.
Sound Designer & Movement Director - Gary Sefton.
Composer – Harrison White.
