Kafka’s existential fable is about a bourgeois salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one day to discover he has transformed into a beetle. David Farr and Bjorn Thors' compact, high-reaching theatrical adaptation represents another rare metamorphosis: from literary text to daring physical theatre. Acrobatic acting and Börkur Jónsson’s surreal design are the high-visibility elements here: on top of the Samsas’ shabby, genteel living room sits their son’s bedroom, tilted forwards 90 degrees, like an upturned box, so that Gregor’s bed (a white-sheeted backlit box) hangs vertically. In the opening scene, Gregor (played without any unwieldy carapace costume by Thors) hangs silhouetted inside it; his legs and arms casting a shadow like a crucified insect.
As Gregor’s parasitic parents and sister unite in shock, meagre empathy, then ultimately violent rejection of the beetle that their breadwinner has become, Thors roams the walls and bannisters in speechless fear and confusion. It’s a performance which, at its height, conveys something of the pain of being a man, through wide-eyed insectoid scuttling. Vitally, it’s underpinned by a solid script (from Farr), which shifts the focus from the existentially despairing Gregor to his family. His degradation, crucially, is the chrysalis for their renewed pride. Farr points up the Nazi allegory, especially in the character of Gregor’s sister’s Aryan suitor (meticulously played by Jonathan McGuiness).
Ultimately, it’s unity of tone that makes this work so well: Farr, Thors and Jonsson create a limber, joined-up idiom, where even Gregor’s repressed family occasionally break into beetle-ish manoeuvres when sexual or violent fantasies get the better of them. Given that Thors never touches the ground, it’s necessarily short, so, frustratingly, the lucid theatrical extension of Kafka’s story can’t reach quite as high and wide as its main performer. Still, it’s droll, dark, sumptuously soundtracked, and undoubtedly a coup de théâtre.
A great physical performance, a great decor, a great music, great intentions... yet it seems that we're missing the metamorphosis from Gregor's point of view... how it develops, how it affects him... and if efficient, the play goes so fast that you don't have time to breathe and be touched... the great music should not replace the inner life of the characters.
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A great physical performance, a great decor, a great music, great intentions... yet it seems that we're missing the metamorphosis from Gregor's point of view... how it develops, how it affects him... and if efficient, the play goes so fast that you don't have time to breathe and be touched... the great music should not replace the inner life of the characters.