'Delirium': Cabaret version of Dostoyevsky's 'The Brothers Karamazov'

Can any novel be transformed into a two-hour play? Undaunted by the epic scope of Dostoyevsky's

The Brothers Karamazov

, EgoPo Classic Theatre opens its season with

Delirium

, presented by Theatre O and Irish playwright Enda Walsh.

The stage set of Brian Jones so much as tells you that you are in for a cabaret version of the classic. A steel scaffold stands in front of a rear wall covered with empty picture frames, as though this could be the living room of any family. The wall and carpet are blood red, while a small cocktail bar could just as easily be a sacrificial altar.

Debauched Fyodor (Robert Smythe) has three sons: dissolute Mitya (Chris Anthony), intellectual Ivan (Johnny Smith) and ex-monk Alyosha (Anthony Crosby). Bastard son Smerdyakov (Ross Beschler) uses puppets to bitterly describe Fyodor's history of abuse, while two sexy she-devils, Grushenka (Kayla Anthony) and Katerina (Kelly McCaughan) excite everyone's lust. Quite a tidy family circle!

Director Brenna Geffers' production is physical, utterly awash in sound, song, color, lights, and inventive choreographed movement. She strives for universality, partially turning the Karamazovs into a sort of dysfunctional American family. But by eclipsing Dostoyevsky's special brand of slavophile mysticism, an unwitting element of parody creeps in.

The play's cabaret aura heats up further in Act 2. Grushenka's seductions lead to a wild party scene. A curtain of CDs now shrouds the picture-frame wall, reflecting multicolored strobe lights. Characters now in costume - Aladdin, Superman, Madonna with purple hair and lights - dance in erotic transport to the pounding rhythms of American disco and rap.

Delirium includes enough argument to keep matters serious. Every character has a cameo moment, soliloquies made more effective with lighting, and onlookers frozen in dramatic poses. In this way Delirium stays true to the spirit of the novel, where character is revealed mostly through what people say.

Then Smerdyakov rolls back the CD curtain, and in a stunning finale he and Alyosha argue Dostoyevsky's essential question: Is there a God? But the central question struggles to attain prominence as all night long, Delirium has been raising a rival question: Is this play a send-up?