The Kreutzer Sonata is an angry novel Tolstoy wrote late in life, after he had recovered from a moral and spiritual crisis and become a devout Christian. He wrote it to denounce sex and music as narcotics that deflect mankind from the only thing that is important. Physical desire, he argued, was a serious obstacle in relations between men and women, which could lead to tragedy. And music was a dangerous aphrodisiac.
The novel is the story of a husband who, in a jealous rage, stabs to death the pianist who had played Beethoven’s rousing Kreutzer Sonata with his wife, a violinist. Anton Chekhov wrote of this novel: “You will hardly find anything as powerful in seriousness of conception and beauty of execution.”
It was adapted by the actor-writer Ted Dykstra, who performs it magnificently in a one-man show at the Soulpepper Company in Toronto.
When you buy your ticket, the sales lady warns you that the performance has “mature content.”
This is profoundly wrong.
She should be specific: “This is a diatribe against sex,” she should say. “It may ruin your sex life for ever.”
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
