AS outlined by this university production's researcher, Mark Smith, Dostoyevsky's Demons is a 700-page novel with dead ends and non-committal characters, rife with ambiguity in its portrayal of political dissent and revolt in 1872 Russia.

No surprise, then, that the students of the University of York Department of Theatre, Film and Television should seek to give such a heavyweight tome a modern British interpretation in a devised piece honed by York playwright Hannah Davies, of Common Ground Theatre Company.

In a nutshell, Demons examines a society where the poor and the powerless are governed by an isolated hub of the super-rich, whose young members are disenfranchised loose cannons and whose elders are smugly secure and complacent. Any similarity with the elitist Britain of today is entirely intentional.

What is less familiar in this neutered age – where industrial action becomes ever more rare and parties of radical protest or political action end up with only one seat in parliament – is the emergence of a small group of activists determined to fight the "grotesque inequalities" that surround them.

The last time a seething mass gathered in Britain was the peace march of 2003, when the wishes of more than one million were ignored by Tony Blair's government. By comparison, the anti-austerity protests that followed the Tories' General Election triumph last month were powder puff because society is increasingly fractured, the collective seen as less important than the individual.

It is against this solipsistic backdrop that a Left-leaning agit-prop production of Demons seeks to refract Dostoyevsky's novel through a contemporary lens.

Director Tom Cornford draws attention to French film director Jean-Luc Godard, Polish film-maker Andrzej Wajda and Frank Castorf's German stage adaptation having asked the same question of Demons in the past: what does the story and its ideas mean to us in each age?

The conclusion in 2015 is that the desire to change the world does not alter, and nor does the belief that it will require inflicting damage and destruction to do so. What has changed is the information weapon of choice of those seeking to make the changes: control of modern communication rests in social media; here protestors are drawn to a meeting by the torchlight of their mobile phones.

In this robustly physical interpretation of Demons, a vigorous ensemble cast of 12 plays out a clash between the self-serving private sector with its gated community philosophy, and those averse to such elitism. These 90 minutes are challenging, idealist, worthy, with directorial flourishes such as powder spray for death scenes, but ultimately the play lacks the punch in the gut of reality.

Demons, University of York Department of Theatre, Film and Television/Common Ground Theatre Company, Scenic Theatre at TFTV Department; further performances at The Fleeting Arms, Gillygate, York, Wednesday and Thursday, 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

 

* A post-show discussion on contemporary radical politics and protest movements will take place after Thursday's show at The Fleeting Arms. Helen Graham, from York Alternative History, Graham Martin, from York People's Assembly, and a member of the Green Party will be on the discussion panel.