‘Insulted and Injured’: careening decadence

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “The Insulted and Injured” has endured its own insult and injury over the years. Hastily scribbled in 1861 as a serialized potboiler following the Russian novelist’s years as a political prisoner and Siberian exile, it is an early example of Dostoevsky’s sympathy for social damaged goods. Though lacking the substance of his philosophical novels that would follow (“Crime and Punishment” was five years away), the obscure novel -- its one English translation, from 1905, is extremely difficult to find -- presents social decay enough to keep the Berlin theater com- pany Volksbuhne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz very busy for about four actively outrageous hours in UCLA’s Freud Playhouse.

It is hard to believe that this is the first visit to the U.S. of the Volksbuhne (or “people’s stage”), headquartered on the Rosa Luxemburg Place in the former East Germany. The company, founded in 1914 as a workers’ theater by Erwin Piscator, has been for nearly a century a model of avant-garde, politically engaged stagecraft. It helped Bertolt Brecht develop his epic theater. Since German reunification, it has found particularly fertile ground for attacking (as well as indulging in) mass culture and attracting controversy.

“The Insulted and Injured,” part of the UCLA Live International Theatre Festival, is the third installment in director Frank Castorf’s “Capitalism and Depression” cycle, which began in 1999 with “Streetcar Named Desire.” It is also part of his continued fascination with Dostoevsky -- Volksbuhne has also done his recent stagings of “The Demons” and “The Idiot.” And, most importantly, it is an excellent indication that a legendary leftist theater company has lost none of its fury.

Long though the evening is, Castorf has no patience with Dostoevsky’s gradual exposition of decadence. The characters are, from their first appearance on stage, shorn of decorum. Sympathy is thrown out the window. The show starts unhinged and stays that way, and the wonder of it is that it can sustain this rush to hysteria over the long haul.

Partly autobiographical, Dostoevsky’s novel is narrated by an impoverished writer, Vanya, whose idealism keeps him in a state of perpetual bewilderment. Characters fulfill their destinies. The rich and ruthless get richer and more powerful. Those who won’t play the game get nowhere. The poor stay put.

Castorf’s adaptation is like watching the novel through a peephole. In Bert Neumann’s extraordinary set, all of St. Petersburg is transferred to a single suburban German house, which revolves. Sometimes we can see through the windows, but most of the action inside is witnessed on a large video screen. Perched on the roof, it turns the drama into a soap opera. On one side of the house is a skating rink. When all else fails, characters don ice skates and careen back and forth or break into manic dance steps to loud music -- rock, klezmer, Uzbekistan pop. It’s a violent bunch, and the careening regularly turns physically brutal.

There is little of Russia left in this adaptation (performed in German with English supertitles) other than the fact that Vanya (Martin Wuttke) wears a fur cap and spends his four hours on stage half-crazed. His nemesis, the Prince (Henry Hubchen), one of Dostoevsky’s elegant villains, becomes a crude German businessman who enjoys indulging in his own personal sexual humiliation as much as he does using his wealth and power to humiliate others.

But there is little sympathy for the insulted and injured. The deranged, dying orphan girl, Nelly (Kathrin Angerer), whom Vanya adopts, is more surly sex kitten. Natasha (Jeanette Spassova), whom Vanya loves, is no longer Dostoevsky’s overly sensitive young woman but now angry ice maiden. Alyosha (Milan Peschel), the Prince’s son, recklessly slaloms between Natasha and the wealthy young princess his father chooses for him. The princess, Katya (Irina Potapenko), is a vapid modern teen princess in tight top with a glittery American flag pasted on her arm. Natasha’s father (Bernhard Schutz) offers a heavy dose of working-class anger.

Dostoevsky’s plot comes and goes. Some scenes are close to the novel, but they don’t add up to much in this mad house. Certainly, Sir Henry, the lounge lizard who sets up his Yamaha synthesizer in the living room and provides a background of doodling Euroschlock, is happiest when he can stop a heated argument by getting folks to join in on a Beatles medley.

But this ongoing jolt between high out-of-control emotion and pop culture keeps a viewer fascinated. When the video screen is not looking in on the soap opera inside the house, it shows us television commercials -- and a bit of porn for the licentious Prince.

Dostoevsky paints a depressing picture of Russian society with a very thin safety net, a downtrodden lot for whom being insulted and injured is not the worst thing; at least it means still being alive and able to feel. Castorf shows that a century and a half later that net has entirely worn through. These tawdry characters will no longer, can no longer, redeem themselves.

Yet they can hypnotize us nonetheless. Maybe it’s just all that exciting energy on stage from a brilliant, hardworking, fearless cast. Even among the detritus of modern living, Castorf seems to be saying, the life force somehow thrives.

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‘The Insulted and Injured’

Where: Freud Playhouse, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave., Westwood

When: Tonight, 8

Ends: Today

Price: $30-$45

Contact: (310) 825-2101

Running time: 4 hours, 30 minutes