Pozdnyshev, the wife-murdering anti-hero of Leo Tolstoy's 1889 novella 'The Kreutzer Sonata' is less well known than Gogol's delusional civil servant Poprishchin or Bret Easton Ellis's psychopathic businessman Patrick Bateman. But in Nancy Harris's unsettling monologue adaptation, Hilton McRae's Pozdnyshev is as unsettling as his fellow fictional madmen.
In Natalie Abrahami's revival of her own 2009 production, McRae's fastidious Pozdnyshev sits alone in a train carriage, narrating the story of his relationship with his wife, from romantic beginnings to violent end. His language is elevated and poetic, with dreamy snatches of violin snaking in to bother him as he struggles for precision of recollection.
The piece accelerates to a wilder tempo as Pozdnyshev's surface calm starts to slip: dissonance creeps in as the conversation turns to a coldly misogynist dissection of gender relations and a disconcertingly heated expression of hatred for the titular Beethoven sonata.
As the final movement commences, he describes his pianist wife's increasing intimacy with a violinist friend. The music grows ever louder until it becomes clear that the live musicians are in fact the doomed pair, playing the piece that will climax in their demise.
Where Tolstoy was arguing against excessive carnality, Harris is almost doing the opposite: her Pozdnyshev is a psychopath unhinged by his rejection of beauty. This elegant text isn't a major work in and of itself, but the hallucinatory sensuality of Abrahami's production and unnerving plausibility of McRae's performance make it a memorable finale to Abrahami's tenure as Gate co-artistic director.