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Massive changes are afoot at London’s boutiquey-est fringe theatre, The Print Room. Formerly tucked away down a maze of posh streets, it’s relocated to the old Coronet cinema, smack bang in Notting Hill Gate, where a studio-sized theatre and the full-size movie screen are set to co-exist when the screen reopens next year.
It’s an impressively atmospheric venue in a staggeringly plum location, and in theory, ‘Notes from Underground’ is the perfect attention-grabbing opener: rising star Harry Lloyd (‘Doctor Who’, ‘Game of Thrones’) performing his and director-designer Gerald Garutti’s adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s 1864 novella, twice nightly.
Lloyd puts in a very game performance as the book’s unreliable, unnamed narrator (usually referred to as the Underground Man), an embittered former civil servant who rails against society with a mix of philosophical profundity, personal bitterness, and incipient madness.
Initially Lloyd the star comes across a touch hammy. But after a while you realise his boomingly un-naturalistic performance helps Dostoyevsky’s wilfully obtuse words slide down a little easier (as does the dynamism supplied by a fine design team – particular credit to lighting designer Bertrand Couderc).
However, that is not to say these ‘Notes…’ are easy to follow: ramblings that are digestible on the page are hard to really understand when spoken. Lloyd makes it entertaining as he can, but it's still a bit sloggy. His youth perhaps counts against him: the Underground Man’s world-view is more understandable coming from the jaundiced retiree of the book, while here he seems perversely puppyish and idealistic.
Nonetheless, Lloyd holds the stage well, and is far stronger in the Underground Man’s moments of autobiographical lucidity, letting his mask of disgust slip as he launches into excruciating stories about his failed interactions with others – an assertive businessman, his former work colleagues, a sweet young prostitute.
Better shows will surely come, but it’s an admirably ballsy way to christen The Print Room’s new digs, a decent swing at staging the patently un-stagable.