Dear editor,
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Mr. Nemtusak clearly misrepresents our production in three statements from his review. First, he refers to the “painfully cartoonish accent” of one of the actors, which I can only imagine is a reference to my wife, Luda Jameson, a member of the cast who was born and raised in Russia, but has spent the past eight years in Chicago and has, as a result, a rather unique voice. However, she is hardly cartoonish, and I was certainly stumped upon reading the review to figure out what could have caused Mr. Nemtusak to hear one rogue actor with a terrible accent in a cast that was not attempting to use any accents at all.
Mr. Nemtusak also describes the script as having “some superficial ties to The Idiot…at least as translated by Luda Jameson.” This statement is extremely dubious. If Mr. Nemtusak wants to refer to two texts and how closely they are tied to each other, he should at least read them. If he has, I don’t see how he could believe that Dostoevsky Trip, which, with a few minor dramatic edits, offers an entire act composed of almost verbatim dialogue lifted straight from The Idiot, does not have very close ties to the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky. He also makes the thinly veiled assertion that our translation, the work of Luda Jameson, one of the founding members of the company, should be considered suspect. Though Mr. Nemtusak all but states outright that he, as a rule, dismisses the work of Vladimir Sorokin, modern Russian literature, and indeed the Russian contribution to theater in general, if my guess is wrong and he can speak the language he is welcome to a copy of both the original and our translation to satisfy his curiosity.
