“The first part of The Brothers Karamazov brings on stage the very backbone of the novel – a story about three brothers (and a fourth, unacknowledged brother), their father and their mutual entanglement in family affairs abounding in crime, bloodshed and misfortune. The subtitle of the first part of the play serves as some kind of an ironic distance from the seriousness and monumentality of the novel itself, as well as a referential poke at Tolstoy.  Known to have been Dostoevsky’s literary rival, he once referred to the author’s writing style in The Brothers Karamazov as being “rough”. It is precisely how the story of the ill-fated family line was staged – under the directorial hand of Oliver Frljić, the world of Karamazovism, that microcosm of despair and tragedies is presented so as to reflect the sociopolitical relations of the time, more specifically, the injustice and misery behind them, which are, as this play goes on to show, still very present, only under different names and appearances. The textual, atmospheric and visual brutality has been wrought into the liaison of dramaturgy and direction, thus creating a certain leitmotif of the whole play which does not bypass either family tables or the romantic and friendly relations, or the ecclesiastical hierarchy. It brings on stage all the brutality and bestiality of the world in which Dostoevsky had put his protagonists, a world which is the very image of hell whose hatchway one easily slips through, but can hardly emerge back from.” – Antonela Tošić