Seattleplays.com review By Tom Scanlon
				Notes from Underground November 5-21 Fri-Sun @8:00 RED Studio, 89 Yesler Way 3rd floor $12 (206)226-5860 Defibrillator Productions
	Defibrilator Productions is at its best in playing out the comic elements of Dostoevsky’s great novella; perhaps the whole thing is a comedy, although with Dostoevsky, the laughs are always followed by teeth gnashing, despair, suffering . . . Director/adaptor Joby Emmons launches the play with great creative energy. Emmons starts the action in a frantic, curious office, not quite modern-day, not quite Dostoevsky-era; peppy worker bees, dressed in white shirts and Russian hats, rush about doing trivial, truly pointless work: shredding paper (mounds of shredded paper accentuate the minimalist set), tossing things around aimlessly. With a droning voiceover from the text, enter Underground Man: dressed in black, lethargic, defiant yet cowardly – always being the one to step aside. The humiliations U.M. suffers are somewhat updated. He is forced to sit in a tiny chair, sent off on demeaning errands, is driven crazy by a co-worker’s shrieking a cell phone conversation. The comic energy continues when U.M. invites himself to a dinner party send-off for Zverkov. Rather that Dos’s “Russian officer,” Z here is an overgrown frat boy, the hero of his former school pals Simonov and Ferfitchkin. Underground Man misbehaves deliciously at the dinner party, ruining toasts, making pointed toasts of his own (“Third point: I love truth . . . not vulgar, pretentious bores”), gets drunk, stamps around to impotently protest being ignored, rages against his former friends and then throws himself at their knees. Aaron Blakely, as the anti-hero, is at his best here, swinging wildly from one extreme to the other. Things get far less interesting when U.M. falls into a fitful relationship with a prostitute, whom he alternately praises and verbally abuses. It’s the toughest part of the story to bring about, and the Defibrilators struggle to find the right tone, losing energy by the line. (Defibrilator needed, stat!) The last third of the play feels forced, in sharp contrast to the giddy staging of the earlier scenes. The supporting roles are extremely well played, with Martin Dinn, Daniel Eneberg and Sam Anderson giving delightfully humorous performances in multiple roles.