Heavy drinking, prostitution, a double axe murder and hours of psychological torment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment might be one of the most extraordinary novels ever written, but it does not seem the most likely candidate to provide musical fun for all the family.

However, the Moscow public will be able to see Dostoyevsky’s dark novel adapted as a musical on the Moscow stage next year, according to plans announced this week.

Crime and Punishment follows the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished former student living in St Petersburg who murders an old woman with an axe, mainly because he believes some people are destined by fate to commit such acts.

One of those involved in the project is the well-known Russian film director Andrei Konchalovsky, who recently asked the Russian film board not to consider his film as a nomination for Russia’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars as he disagreed with the “Hollywoodisation of Russian cinema”.

Konchalovsky said that work on the musical first began 40 years ago, when musicals were becoming popular in the west, and a group of Soviet directors, writers and composers got together and discussed setting Crime and Punishment to music. After years of neglecting the idea, he had finally decided to resurrect it, using some music composed 30 years ago but updating the action to the present day.

“I wouldn’t call it a rock-opera as such, it’s more of a stylised musical creation using song, folklore and elements of opera,” said Konchalovsky.

The novel does not give too many obvious clues as to scenes that could be set to music, though perhaps Raskolnikov will sing a song before murdering his victim, an ageing money-lender.

There is one episode in the novel that does feature a “riotous song with jangling tambourine and whistling” – a dream scene in which Raskolnikov imagines himself as a young boy coming across a group of peasants who are beating an ailing mare. The animal is expiring while a large group of men take turns to beat it with sticks and crowbars, until it finally collapses. More men take turns to assault it until the mare finally dies, to the whooping delight of all around, except the wailing Raskolnikov, who cradles its bloody head in his arms and kisses it, weeping.

Casting will begin in November for the two “incredibly difficult” parts of Raskolnikov and Sonya Marmeladova, a young woman who has had to turn to prostitution to support her impoverished family, said the director.