In a scoop for Tokyo, Theatre Cocoon in Shibuya Ward is set to mark the new year with the world premiere of a new production of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" in an original production by English director Phillip Breen with a Japanese cast.
Published in 1866, the book's protagonist is Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished former law student with psychotic delusions of grandeur who escapes undetected after murdering an old pawnbroker to rob her, then turning his ax on her half-sister who appears by chance.
Afterward, Raskolnikov (played here by Haruma Miura) is tormented by guilt until he meets Sonya (Yuko Oshima), a pure soul driven by debt to prostitution, who is perhaps the first friend in his life. After admitting to her what he's done, he follows her advice to tell the police to atone for his sins — a confession they're not sure whether to believe or not, but which earns him a stint in Siberia, where Sonya follows to visit him and await his release.