IDIOT, THE

Writing with sweeping grandeur of the pre-Soviet era, Dostoyevsky describes an elite society swarming with eccentrics. Some are idiots. Many are caught in a sea of emotion and might as well be idiots. Michael Sheen, a young British actor, reads withabsolute control of voice, characters and unfamiliar Russian names. Each character is sharply delineated by inflection, tone, pacing, tension. Even the women are nicely drawn, though in this tight abridgment it's sometimes hard to distinguish among the minor ones. When hysteria is called for, Sheen delivers it, not loudly, but with subdued intensity. Naxos punctuates the text with a selection of appropriate classical music, mostly somber, sometimes grand.