Notes from underground play review

I saw Dostoevsky's Notes From the Underground at the Yale Rep Theatre. The entire play was acted and the music performed by just three people, and one person in a lighing booth to man the cameras. I wasn't sure about how i felt about it until later that night, when i was speaking about it with my roommate Zack Stein. It threw my feelings of the underground man and his life around, pulling out of me hatred, compassion, and everything in between in a matter of minutes. How the underground man can rape a girl and make me feel sorry for HIM and her makes me feel physically sick. He was disgusting and funny and scary all at the same time. The play also had great visual effects, with the use of a wireless web camera or two to give you an up close and personal feeling with the actors that at times was almost overwhelming. It drew attention to the faces of the actors in a way that no other play i have seen (and i have seen quite a few) has been able to do. Although the cameras gave the play a very personal touch, they also at times drew away from it, as the small stage was sometimes full of a projection. In one scene, the underground man is screaming with his arms open up to a massive projection of his friend, which made a great statement about the underground man's ego and self-opinions, but also was "too much," if i may use such a broad description. The cameras combined with the hipster/funk soundtrack gave me the feeling that the underground man was the last person on the earth, keeping records of his life in a post-apocalyptic world. After the first half of the play, though, when most of the character development of the underground man was finished, the camera was used much less and was, in my opinion, easier to watch. The girl, Liza, had a great voice. Both she and the underground man were great actors. She also sang in some of the background music, which sounded nice, but was sometimes distracting. He seemed to have taken alot of his mannerisms from the joker in "The Dark Knight" (overpronouncing his "T"s and "S"s, leaving his mouth open and his tongue hanging out) and Johnny Depp's character in "Pirates of the Carribbean (his flambouyant arm movements." The Joker imitation was great, but made him seem more insane than i had imagined in the book. The Depp was hilarious at times, but it also was, in my opinion, a little bit too insane for the book and sometimes it even felt forced and fake. When Liza came to his house, his arms raised above his head was funny at first, but overdone and eventually distracting to the audience. In the book, the underground man was smarter, weaker, and less insane. When Liza is in his apartment, the underground man is more of a wreck than she, but in the play it is the other way around. "She was now the heroine, while i was just a crushed and humiliated creature" (p. 345).The play felt like it could have been alot shorter. There was alot of rambling done by the underground man that could have been cut out, but in the book the underground man rambled as well, so i understood it. Maybe an intermission sometime in the two hour play would have done the trick. Overall, it was a great play, but the seats were terribly uncomfortable on the bus and in the theatre.