The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror arise not so much from his totalitarian dystopias as from his prose. But it’s best to approach Kafka with an open mind.
The Nobel prize is nothing. The real badge of literary greatness is the addition of the ‘esque’ suffix to one’s name and, if you’re truly outstanding, the word ‘nightmare’, too. Franz Kafka manages this distinguished double, although some readers find the connotations of horror arise not so much from his totalitarian dystopias as from his prose. But it’s best to approach Kafka with an open mind.
I greatly enjoyed the start of Metamorphosis and my hopes were high that Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a giant dung-beetle would develop into a sparkling comedy of manners with his anxious parents trying to marry him off to a landowner’s daughter. ‘He eats anything. Literally. And he’s brilliant if you’ve got squatters. One look, and they pack their bags.’ Or they might have sold him to a circus impresario. ‘He’ll bring the house down. And clear up after the elephants.’ But Kafka’s talent for persecution fantasies outweighed his comic gifts and the book turned into a dispiriting tale of victimised impotence.
The same is true of The Trial, in which someone with less than half a surname, Joseph K, is arrested for something less than a proper crime. This tricky material has been turned into a satire by the estimable comic writer Tom Basden. As he discovers, Mr K is a tough character to dramatise. More predicament than personality, he’s mono-directional and can reach only farther and farther into the depths of his befuddled wrath. We watch as he tries to persuade various obstructive flunkies to reveal the charges against him, but Basden loses interest in him and introduces us to his lawyer, a bullying Latin-quoting weirdo, whose glamorous assistant is trapped in a never-ending unpaid contract.
The play ought to work better. Our super-computerised world with its multifunctional ‘customer service operators’, who get a bonus every time they prevent a consumer from using some already-paid-for amenity, offers ideal material for a satirical tear-up but the focus here is too loose, the scene-structure is bitty and jumpy, and Kafka’s world aligns itself awkwardly with our own. It’s not clear why Mr K has no access to legal aid, why human rights aren’t mentioned and why he doesn’t outsmart the bureaucracy by faking a new ID or mounting a media campaign to clear his name. Basden is a serious comic talent and he doesn’t need to peg his work to the fantasies of popular miserablists. He should strike out on his own.
Over at the Almeida Stephen Dillane and his director Travis Preston are playing Ibsen. And I’m afraid that for Ibsen this is not a home fixture. The Master Builder, written in 1892, is presented in a style that is 118 years out of date. Gap suits and loafers all round. The minimalised furnishings would fit in the back of a taxi. There’s a lectern, a chair and a low semi-circular kneeler overlooking the floor which, mystifyingly, is spread with peat from grow-bags. An iron staircase riveted to the back wall is employed at key moments to draw our attention away from the drama and towards the director’s thematic ornaments, which are crowded with insignificance. During the opening scene Aline Solness, yet to enter the action, spends ten minutes crawling down the staircase, step by laborious step, like a sloth working up an appetite for a midnight snack. In the following scene, she takes a jug and studiously waters four legs of a chair.
The cast at least maintain the pretence that they’re in a serious feat of dramatic art. Gemma Arterton plays the temptress Hilde with plenty of minxy allure. Anastasia Hille, as a black-clad Aline, mischievously ferrets out laughs from her character’s puritanical attachment to her ‘duty’. In the title role, Stephen Dillane gives a decent account of a slick modern architect going slightly bonkers (which seems to be the effect the production is aiming for) but in moments of intense emotion he has decided, perhaps with the director’s collusion, to sing, sinnng, sinnnnggggg the role. This practice is strongly disapproved of by modern acting theory. Dillane shows why. Facile, artificial and deeply unpleasing sonorities bonging in one’s ears are not what one goes to the theatre for. This isn’t really Ibsen at all, just a stylised recital of the script presented on what looks like a penthouse roof.
Preston’s arbitrary displacements of time and manner represent an all-out assault which the play can’t survive. Failures of nuance and intention abound. Readers with tickets may not wish to discover the ending so let me say no more than to observe that the penultimate line, ‘He’s not there any more,’ got a massive laugh. Big comedy pay-offs like this are, I guarantee, not Ibsen’s purpose here. I wonder what Preston plans to do next. I’d stay away, if I were you.
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