'Wan hour twenty minutes! Have they read the f****r?' as this reviewer's friend Kevin put it on learning the length of RSAMD's production of 'Crime and Punishment'. He has a point. 'Crime and Punishment' is probably the best known of Dostoyevsky's novels. Although not the longest, it exemplifies the author's tendency to rackety plot, large range of characters representing differing moral stances, spiritual musing and moralising on the Russia of his day. A wee bit of a challenge even for the BBC, whose radio adaptation of recent years took up four hour-long episodes.

There is some good work being done in this production, most notably by the ladies. Anneika Rose makes a noble attempt at Sonya, forced into prostitution by the profligacy of her drunken father, Thomasin Rand tackles the difficult role of Dunyasha, sister of the doomed protagonist Raskolnikov with élan, while Melody Grove's Katerina Ivanovna works particularly well in the earlier part of the play.

Fergus Johnston does the best he can with the Raskolnikov the script gives him, Edward Corrie makes a fine foil as Porfiry Petrovich, the investigating officer of Raskolnikov's crime, while Michael Goldsmith also works hard and to effect as Luzhin, Dunyasha's unsuitable suitor.

Our problem as audience lies not in the cast, but in the script, which has perforce been reduced to some very bare bones indeed. The translation and adaptation are not credited in the programme, but have a very transatlantic feel, the forms of address insensitive to Russian social mores of the time. This would be pedantic if Dostoyevsky's purposes had been more delicately handled, but a stumble toward this at the end of the play fails to retrieve very much.

As indicated, there is some worthwhile effort here, and it's to be hoped that some of these students will go on to careers in theatre. However, given some of the significant achievements of the National Theatre of Scotland over the past year or so, those who may in future become part of it deserve a better start to their professional lives than this production offers.

Time: 5.00pm, 20-26 August

Copyright Bill Dunlop 2007. Published on EdinburghGuide.com 2007