WHEN, in March of 2020, the Scottish Government announced the first Covid lockdown (including, of course, the closure of theatres) Glasgow’s Tron Theatre was hosting a genuinely remarkable stage production. Based upon Franz Kafka’s great novella of the same name, and co-created by Scottish theatre company Vanishing Point, the Tron and their Italian collaborators Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, The Metamorphosis had wowed audiences and critics during the mere five performances it was able to stage before the national shutdown.
Two years on – with the on-going (albeit vaccine attenuated) pandemic now overshadowed by the devastating Russian invasion of Ukraine – the production makes a welcome return to the Tron stage ahead of a tour to Dundee, Inverness and Edinburgh.
Seeing the show again now, one is struck by how sharply Kafka’s narrative and adapter/director Matthew Lenton’s staging of it speak to the experiences of restriction and isolation that we have all just been through.
In Kafka’s story, Gregor Samsa famously wakes “from troubled dreams” to find himself “transformed in his bed into a giant insect.” A human mind trapped inside an arthropod body, Gregor (modernised here as a delivery cyclist) is unable to communicate with his terrified and increasingly hostile family.
Even his ever-loving sister Greta begins to lose her empathy for this frightening creature that eats slops and seems to prefer to live in dust and filth.
Exactly how to represent Gregor visually on stage is a challenge for any theatre-maker who is bold enough to tackle Kafka’s deeply psychological story. In 2013, for example, Edinburgh International Festival audiences saw the great Taiwanese actor Wu Hsing-kuo play Kafka’s protagonist quite literally, as an animal, in a memorable costume that comprised a turtle back and long, feather antennae.
Fascinating though Wu’s representation of Gregor’s physical plight was, Lenton’s preference for a more psychological and allusive portrayal (in which we see the central character in human form) is more rewarding. As in 2020, this only slightly re-cast production has Sam Stopford playing Gregor’s disembodied human mind, while Italian actor Nico Guerzoni performs the role of the wretched, transformed Gregor.
Wearing identical striped pyjamas, Stopford and Guerzoni (whose Italian language – foreign to Gregor’s family – stands in for the protagonist’s animal noises) evoke their character’s plight with tremendous power and sensitivity. Thanks to the brilliance of Kenneth MacLeod’s set design and Simon Wilkinson extraordinary lighting, the universally excellent supporting cast is often seen through a dream-like haze.
They portray the family’s moral terror and economic desperation with a combination of plausible pragmatism and, in-keeping with Kafka’s mordant wit, moments of laugh-out-loud humour. Alana Jackson captures the anguished desperation of Greta, while Elicia Daly and Paul Thomas Hickey play Gregor’s parents with a gloriously understated, bleak comedy.
Mark Melville’s music and sound are impressively unobtrusive, yet wonderfully atmospheric. Indeed, they melt into the superbly complete visual and aural aesthetic of a piece that honours Kafka’s story magnificently.
At Tron Theatre, Glasgow until March 26, then touring until April 16 vanishing-point.org
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