DIARY OF A MADMAN

The title loony, an obsessive petty bureaucrat, first saw the literary light of day in 1835, when his creator, Russia's first great fiction writer, was gaining his initial renown. Backed up by percussion instruments, Stephen Ouimette impersonates him here in a Stratford Festival staged reading, which was recorded by the CBC in Toronto. By and large, the story satirizes the officialdom of the time and place, but Ouimette, while doing his best with humor that has gotten a bit stale, chillingly plays his character's descent into madness. A fine performance. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 02]