We’ve seen Moby Dick on stage and even The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, but Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment – really?

The Street Theatre is staging an extraordinary adaptation by Americans Marilyn Campbell-Lowe and Curt Columbus of the mighty 19th century novel, which they’ve got down to 90 minutes.

The New York Times, praising the adaptation, asked: “Who would have thought that the novel no high school student has ever finished reading would make such engrossing theatre?” 

But Christopher Samuel Carroll, who is playing the central role of Raskolnikov, is not on that page. He’s actually read it.

“People are very unfair to Dostoyevsky and Crime and Punishment,” he says. “I think it is one of those great novels and it’s rich with ideas, so it can be read very easily,”

Carroll is no stranger to existentialist plays, having featured in The Street’s 2019 production of Kafka’s Metamorphosis and in his own production of Camus’ The Stranger in 2021.

But he puts his participation in such plays down to good luck rather than an obsession with existentialism, telling me: “I was fortunate enough to be there but, yes, it is definitely terrain that defines me.

Praising The Street’s Caroline Stacey, who is directing the production, he says: “Caroline believes in the theatre’s power to grapple with big ideas.”

When I catch up with him it’s only week one of rehearsals but he describes it as “very stimulating, we are confronting such huge questions”.

As well, they’re learning about St Petersburg in the 19th century, a city with great poverty and huge pressures, but also central to  the foment of ideas.

He has never been there, but he has travelled on the Trans-Siberian Railway, so has a feel for it.

He’s read neither War and Peace nor Les Misérables, which both feature casts of thousands and cover decades of history, but says Crime and Punishment is different, and very personal, as it centres around a key character.

The main character, Raskolnikov, goes through a self-made ordeal, Carroll says, it’s no secret that the novel begins as he’s psyching himself up to commit a murder.

As well, Carroll says, it’s a foundational detective story, one Stacey has described as “a why-dunnit, not who-dunnit”.

Campbell-Lowe and Columbus have picked up on the central conflict between the student Raskolnikov and the brilliant detective, Porfiry, played by PJ Williams, beginning when they meet.

The play pits Raskolnikov against the detective, whose sharp, practical intelligence means he can read human beings.

But he does not need to exhibit his intelligence, Carroll says, rather he underplays himself to lull Raskolnikov into a false sense of security, very like TV’s detective Columbo.

The play covers just a couple of weeks, showing the detective’s focus on the obsessive mind of the murderer.

For a murderer, he certainly is.

“Raskolnikov is trying to contort the reality about himself throughout the play, but in fact he commits murder in cold blood,” Carroll says.

Plotwise, it follows the anticipation of murder, the aftermath where he deals with his conscience, and his efforts to save the young woman, Sonia (Josephine Gazard), who, like Faust’s Gretchen, becomes his redeemer.

Comparison with Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean and his nemesis, Inspector  Javert, comes to mind, but Carroll notes that the play doesn’t focus on the years of hard labour – that’s Les Miserables – but rather on  the guilt, the fear of being caught and  the sensation of being a butterfly about to be pinned by Porfiry.

The play is brought to an end as he confesses his guilt, but hints at an ultimate journey of redemption where he comes to know himself.

But make no mistake, Carroll says, his character commits bloody, shabby murder in cold blood, with no heat of passion and no rage, even though he tries to justify it saying he can use the money to help poor people. He  thinks he stands above the law, an idea that comes undone when he kills the pawnbroker’s innocent young sister.

It leads to chaos. Raskolnikov is on stage throughout, with the other two actors playing various characters emerging from the background and disappearing into it as the action is interrupted by another scene – nightmarish. 

But weirdly the play finishes on a note of possibility.

“Do you believe in the story of Lazarus” Porfiry asks. “Do you believe in God?”  

For this anti-hero, the answers might be very important. 

Crime and Punishment, The Street 2, June 21 (preview) July 7.