Wild cadenza of a tortured misfit Barry Otto, rehearsing for The Kreutzer Sonata in Sydney's Walsh Bay, will play Pozdnyshev in the State Theatre Company of South Australia production. BARRY Otto, his arm slung casually over an upright piano, looks for all the world as though he's about to start crooning. It comes as no small disappointment, then, that it's a sigh, and not a Sinatra number, that escapes his mouth. "One o'clock already?" he says, gazing out a window overlooking Sydney Harbour. It always flies, does fun, when you're having fun. At the piano sits Gabriella Smart. She is plucking out Beethoven as Geordie Brookman, the State Theatre Company of South Australia's new artistic director, pores over notes. "This is our first day together," Otto says. Pull up a chair. Let's talk Tolstoy. The trio is ensconced in Sydney Theatre Company's Walsh Bay practice space, the Loft, in its first day of full rehearsals for the STCSA's season-opening production, The Kreutzer Sonata. Brookman's audacious take on Leo Tolstoy's famous novella premieres next week at Adelaide Festival. The one-man show, starring Otto, will mark 32-year-old Brookman's much-anticipated directorial debut at the helm of the Adelaide-based company. So far, so straightforward. What, then, are we doing 1400km from STCSA's home base in a tiny, steamy rehearsal space boasting one of the best views in Sydney? "Ahh, look," begins Otto, raising his hand apologetically. That's my fault. I'm a sook. My family is (in Sydney), and the older I get the slightly more sooky and the slightly more lonely I become. Still, it's not a bad view, is it? The 72-year-old veteran of Australian stage and screen, well known for his role as the damaged dancing patriarch in Strictly Ballroom (for which he won an AFI award) as well as starring roles in Cosi, Bliss and Australia, requested shifting a fortnight's worth of rehearsals to his home city. STC has been very kind to us here. But the truth is I just can't be away from the family any more," says Otto, who also has a role in Baz Luhrmann's soon-to-be-released The Great Gatsby. When I was younger, I was out and about, being social - all that. But suddenly I kind of find myself really clinging on to the family; needing them. Needing them more than ever. It seems a curious admission, until one notes the character he has been studying and rehearsing since May last year is Pozdnyshev, one of Tolstoy's most tortured creations: jealous husband, mysogynist, murderer, train-travelling misfit. It is, as Otto concedes, a "heavy role." Has he found himself in need of familial fortitude? "Maybe," Otto says, with a grin. Maybe that's it. It's a challenging role, and an amazing, flawed character. From a male perspective, we all know him - he's there in the male psyche. This scary thing called jealously: it's powerful, and when it gets a hold of you, you might not know where that could end. Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata - published in 1889 as an interpretation of Beethoven's musical piece of 1803 - was censored by Russian authorities, its depictions of infidelity and matricide causing a sensation upon its release. The controversy was fuelled by the author's controversial preface, which outlined his thoughts on the institution of marriage (he opposed it), and the esteem in which he held the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence. The story follows Pozdnyshev, a psychologically flawed husband whose long-running jealousy of his pianist wife and her violinist accompanist - who play The Kreutzer Sonata - culminates in a murder, an acquittal and a life spent on the railways trying to figure out the meaning of love. But Brookman's production - of a text adapted by Sue Smith (Mabo, Brides of Christ) - is no simple one-hander. Otto's every move as the wide-eyed protagonist will be accompanied - shadowed, anticipated - by a live score that features everything from the sonata itself to Chopin, Philip Glass and industrial rock group Nine Inch Nails. Add to that the fact the production won't be staged in a theatre but in an adapted space inside the Adelaide Festival Centre's scenic workshop, and Brookman's first show at the helm of the company seems as bold and complex as the Russian author himself. "It's certainly a challenge for my first show as artistic director," Brookman says. I'd read him for a long time. But mostly I had read his longer works, like Anna Karenina and War and Peace. But I read Kreutzer and it was just incredible. I thought, Yep, this pushes the envelope just far enough. This is it. Otto concedes the work is a challenging one for an actor, but says the idea of the story being played out to music has emotional appeal. "This is such an intimate piece, so honest," Otto says. The way the music in this production follows the story is also a big part of the attraction. I'm not musical, but this music just moves me. It melts me. You know, I've never done anything quite like this before. The Kreutzer Sonata, with its myriad reincarnations, has a long and intriguing history. Beethoven published his Violin Sonata No 9 in 1803, dedicating it to violinist George Bridgetower, who premiered the piece that year. However, after a disagreement in which Bridgetower is said to have insulted the honour of a woman with whom the composer was fond, Beethoven retracted the dedication and proclaimed it instead for violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer. He, however, purportedly described the piece "unintelligible" and never performed it. Almost 100 years after its inauspicious beginnings, Tolstoy used the sonata's suspenseful first movement as inspiration for his controversial novella. That work, which was banned in Russia, would go on to become the inspiration for a range of artistic interpretations including Rene Francois Xavier Prinet's 1901 painting, a play by American playwright Langdon Mitchell that premiered on Broadway in 1906, and Czech composer Leos Janacek First String Quartet (1923). It has been recalibrated, recycled and reinterpreted in countless productions - including by Richard Tognetti's Australian Chamber Orchestra in 2010. Brookman shrugs off any notion that a piece with such a rich history of interpretation is at risk of bowdlerisation or misinterpretation. That, in fact, is the beautiful thing about the Kreutzer. This work feeds into adaptations. Smart, the Adelaide-based Helpmann award-winning musician, adds that Tolstoy's connection with music is inextricably connected to his writing. "It's obvious that music was integral part of Tolstoy's life," she says. The intelligence with which Tolstoy analyses Beethoven's Kreutzer - it's a very complex work - and integrates that into the story, he shows us how much he understood that and how well he understood music. Smart says the score, which she and violinist Elizabeth Layton will perform live on stage, is less an accompaniment than an equal part of the narrative. Geordie and I have endeavoured to show that this is a story told in the 19th century yet set with contemporary themes. And the music alludes to that. It evokes it," she says. Brookman says the use of Nine Inch Nails is testament to the work's enduring resonance. "As the story gets more and more intense, we descend further into the character's head and the music becomes more and more contemporary," he says. Nine Inch Nails just fits. Perhaps it's all part of Brookman's plan: to begin his artistic directorship with a bang. Indeed, his is a debut that will be closely watched by theatre insiders. Brookman, of course, hails from one of the country's best known theatre families. His father Rob is chief executive officer at STCSA - he was appointed at the same time as his son - while his two brothers are also prominent arts identities. Kit Brookman is a playwright (and winner of this year's Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award) while Torben Brookman is the producer of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, which opens in June. For his part, Geordie admits to a few nerves. "To launch into Adelaide Festival is pretty big," he says. Having a show in the festival is something I've dreamed about for a long time. To do that as I step into the company is really special. It's quite an honour. Smart says the production is marked by its emotional honesty. "The story uses the Beethoven as a metaphor for a disastrous love affair," she says. It plays itself out in the music. You can almost hear Tolstoy thinking this out loud; torturing himself. I don't know what he was going through in his private life when he wrote this, but I don't think he was in a very nice place. Indeed, the novella was published as Tolstoy began to make dramatic shifts in his life. Written two years after Anna Karenina, The Kreutzer Sonata marked the author's largest shift from the mainstream and came less than a decade before his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church and his death at a train station in Astapovo. The parallels between the train-bound demises of Pozdnyshev and Tolstoy - mental and mortal respectively - are all too plain. Otto, quiet, polite, measured, sees it and chimes in. "It is interesting, isn't it?" he ponders. (They are) such complex characters. But have I found myself on the train, like Pozdnyshev, talking to strangers, trapping them between stops so they can't get off? I really don't like talking about myself," he says. But I do empathise with this character. Here is a man trying to understand the power within marriage. Of love, of sensitivity. He's looking at something that is broken, and searching for a definition of love. I think we can all find something of ourselves in that. The Kreutzer Sonata opens on February 27 at Adelaide Festival Centre as part of Adelaide Festival.