Forbrytelse og straff

Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov has decided to murder. He's pretty sure he has the right to do it.

For weeks, the former student has been lying alone in his small, dirty room, constructing a theory:

The world is full of poor, desperate sub-humans who wander around with bowed heads and allow themselves to be subdued. For man is so vile that he gets used to everything. But a very few are able to look beyond habits and conventions and think in new ways. These superhumans have the right to break the law when they think it's right. Raskolnikov decides to find out which group he belongs to.

With an axe hidden inside his coat, he goes to a pawnbroker who preys on the distress of others. If he manages to kill her, he won't just rid society of a pest: He can take her money, afford to eat and drink again, continue his studies and become something great, something bigger than himself. Or is the punishment unavoidable? Will regret, guilt and doubt eat him up from the inside?

In Crime and Punishment, based on Dostoevsky's novel from 1866, the audience is drawn into Raskolnikov's dark thoughts. It's a show about how wrong things can go when a young person under pressure isolates himself with his ideas. But even though Raskolnikov pushes everyone away, someone keeps coming back to tap him on the shoulder.

During the performance, the spectators become a physical part of the motley community up on stage.

The performance is the final part of the theater trilogy Classics for Kids, which is based on three literary classics: Goethe's Faust, Woolf's To the Lighthouse and now Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, one of the world's most read novels. Both of the first two productions were nominated for the Hedda Award for best children's/youth production.