'The Idiot' is a dramatisation of Dostoievsky's original novel. In creating this stage play, Simon Gray chose some of the most vivid and contrasting episodes recounting the strange involvement between Prince Myshkin, the good natured 'Idiot', the beautiful Nastasya Filippovna and her desperate lover and husband, Rogozhin. The ambiguity of these episodes and the paradoxical atmosphere of the novel - hovering between sombre tragedy and grotesque farce - is heightened by the use of a strange, sinister commentator, the character of Ferdyschenko. 'The Idiot' was first presented by the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic, London, in July 1970.