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by Adam Paolozza, Arif Mirabdolbaghi & Viktor Lukawski, directed by Adam Paolozza

TheatreRUN, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto

February 7-19, 2012;

NAC, Ottawa

April 21-May 2, 2015

“Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun”

If you want to experience the joy of pure theatre, then hurry down to the Factory Studio Theatre to see The Double.  Based on the famous 1846 novella of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, this imaginative and darkly funny blend of verbal and physical theatre tells the tale of a humble clerk who loses his already tenuous grip on sanity.

Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin (Adam Paolozza), whose family name means “poor fellow” in Russian, already has a double nature when we first meet him.  Though meek with his superiors he is imperious to his inferiors like his grudging manservant Petrushka (Viktor Lukawski).  Though earning a middling income, he likes to play the great man.  He hires a carriage to take him around St. Petersburg, but is afraid should anyone from work see him in it.  He goes about putting holds on expensive items claiming his manservant will be around the next day to pay for them and pick them up.  He deludes himself that he is invited to an exclusive birthday celebration for Klara Olsufyevna (Lukawski with a violin), a young woman he fancies is in love with him, even when he has to sneak the back way to gain entrance before being ejected. by the footman

When he goes to see his doctor (Lukawski again), he tells him he is surrounded by enemies who are trying to ruin him and breaks down in tears.  Golyadkin’s paranoia soon manifests itself in the form of his double--a man who looks just like him and even has the same name but is as outgoing and cheerful as Golyadkin is withdrawn and morose.  How Golyadkin deals with the threat of an alter-ego more successful than he forms the gist of the play.

Dostoyevsky’s story may form the plot, but it is TheatreRUN’s remarkable presentation that brings it to life.  The Factory Studio Theatre has been arranged so that the first few rows of seats have been replaced by tables and chairs and the front edge of the stage sports a series of footlights--all helping to create the atmosphere of a cabaret at the end of the 19th century.  Musician Arif Mirabdolbaghi, bass-player and lyricist of the award-winning Canadian Metal band Protest The Hero, enters in period costume and plays a solemn Russian lament on his instrument that he gradually alters into a jazzy upbeat tune.  This overture sets up the structure for the whole evening since while TheatreRUN does tell us Dostoyevsky’s tale of madness it also uses it for wild theatrical riffs of its own.      

Mirabdolbaghi serves as the wry narrator of the tale and through his playing becomes a witty musical commentator on the action.  Both Paolozza and Lukawski are amazing adept at mime.  Paolozza plays Golyadkin and sometimes his Double while Lukawski plays about a dozen other characters, sometimes also the Double, who pop up in Golyadkin’s life and distinguishes them all with absolute clarity.  One especially inventive sequence finds Paolozza as Golyadkin 1 inviting Lukawski as the Double to his house.  In one of many riffs on theme, Lukawski goes completely limp and Paolozza manipulates him and speaks for him as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy.  Another hilarious scene has Paolozza as both Golyadkin and the Double struggle with each other on either side of a foot-wide screen.  Paolozza’s instantaneous switches from one to the other is simply amazing. 

While the show retains an air of spontaneity, it is clearly precisely timed and directed.  Paolozza’s and Lukawski’s interactions with the various types of shadows that André Du Toit’s inventive lighting creates is a constant pleasure throughout the show, some lighting tricks leading to gasps of surprise.  Some may find the show’s occasional anachronisms, such as Golyadkin’s 1940s-style radio dream sequence a problem, but as Mirabdolbaghi’s narration reminds us, this is theatrical event occurring here and now rather than a naturalistic period production. 

With the success of Spent last year and now with this stylish and madcap production of The Double, TheatreRUN has established itself as company whose productions you miss at peril to your artistic wellbeing.                 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Arif Mirabdolbaghi. ©2012 Lacey Creighton.

For tickets, visit www.factorytheatre.ca or www.nac-cna.ca.