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Subject to Fits

by Robert Montgomery
review by Michael Scott Moore in SF Weekly February 10, 1999

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Theater of the Sensitive

“Subject to Fits is a response to The Idiot,” writes Robert
Montgomery in his Author’s Note to the Exit’s other show. “It is
absolutely unfaithful to the novel; it uses the novel for its own
selfish purposes; it does not hold the novel responsible.”

Well, someone needs to be held responsible, because the play is
too damn long. It’s less original than Marowitz’s Hamlet, staging
the source novel’s rough plot points more or less in order; and
sometimes the energy in this production can’t support the basic
madness of the play. Prince Myshkin arrives in St. Petersburg
looking like a fresh-faced hippie, simply dressed, and falls into the
claws of a nobleman called Parfyron Rogozhin and a rich society
dame, Natasha Fillipovna, who first treats Myshkin like dirt and
then considers marrying him. The first act deals with Natasha’s
marital decision; the second act deals with the pretty young Aglaya
Yepanchin’s obsession with the epileptic prince, and with
Natasha’s violent death.

The cast here is not the problem. Beth Donohue plays Natasha as
a bitch who sets fire to the hundred thousand rubles Rogozhin
gives her as a marriage proposal, and asks Ganya, another suitor,
to retrieve whatever burning money he can with his teeth. Ganya
(Larry Spenler) is marvelously stiff and nervous, anxious to
succeed in society; his father (Paul Gerrior) is a drunken and
gravel-voiced general; and Aglaya (Kathryn Pallakoff) is a
charmingly cruel and disingenuous brat (“Who needs you!” she
shouts at Myshkin. “All you care about are the deepest regions of
people’s souls!”). Vincent Camillo is well cast in the lead; Kathryn
Trask is a perfect Madame Yepanchin; and Dan Carbone, as
Lebedev, maintains the show’s bleeding edge of manic lack of
taste. He’s marvelously offensive.

No, the problem here is that the playwright doesn’t know when to
quit. He has the characters break into operatic song a few too
many times -- the best one is a Russian march about the symbolic
meaning of a stuffed gerbil -- and there are too many slack,
obscure moments that don’t pay off. It’s what Hamlet would have
been if it had lasted more than 90 minutes: a rather tedious concept
play.
Subject to Fits. By Robert Montgomery. Directed by
John Sowle. Starring Dan Carbone, Vincent Camillo,
Beth Donohue, Paul Gerrior, Larry Spenler, and
Kathryn Trask. At the Exit Theater, 156 Eddy (at
Taylor), through Feb. 27. Call 673-3847.
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