10 – 20 January

Kafka’s short, brutish tale of a young man turning from human to insect overnight exposes the shortcomings and fears of a family trying to keep afloat financially and emotionally. With their son suddenly incapacitated, not only are they facing financial ruin, but there is a horror now living in a first-floor bedroom.

This bold and ambitious retelling of Metamorphosis by Frantic Assembly, who have a reputation for their use of physical theatre to enhance narratives, is well supported by the excellence of designer Jon Bausor’s warped perspective set and a disturbing soundscape by Stefan Janik.

While there is no ‘Hammer House of Horror’ giant cockroach to behold here, an extraordinary performance by Felipe Pacheco as Gregor implies a metamorphosis has taken place – a young man has been destroyed by the toxicity of work and his family’s expectations of him. In this, writer and poet Lemn Sissay has undoubtedly found parallels with his own life as a rejected orphan, of expected family love withdrawn, and has been able to bring great empathy to Gregor’s story.

This is not an easy watch – after all, here is a man suffering prolonged agonies as he morphs from biped into something unspeakable, which we are encouraged to imagine rather than ‘see’ – an individual tormented by the threat of a looming Chief Clerk hard on his heels for repayment of a debt (the Post Office comes to mind), who has alienated and terrified his family, and who has been left to slump and scurry alone in a locked bedroom. But there is something in the way Sissay has rewritten the narrative to illustrate nightmarish ‘Groundhog Day’ behaviour-loops, leading to Gregor’s and later his father’s breakdown, that brings wider insight into attitudes towards work and the resulting relationships within this tight family group.

His portrait of Grete, Gregor’s semi-caring but ultimately self-centred younger sister is a complex one. Hannah Sinclair Robinson plays the dreamy teenager who has just reached sexual maturity, finding disturbing attraction for her soon-to-be-lost foster brother. Robinson successfully suggests a young woman growing out of naivety and playing with provocation.

In the second act Gregor’s struggles become something of a backdrop as the characters of his parents take centre stage. Mr Samsa is given a booming patriarchal presence by Troy Glasgow, whose only reaction to his son’s new persona is to beat him like a dog. Louise Mai Newberry plays his long-suffering wife, a woman largely cowed, “if my life were a concert it would be near silent,” but given to more of an internal dialogue accentuated by being ‘flown’ around the space by her fellow players in classic Frantic Assembly fashion.

Joe Layton plays the looming Chief Clerk, appearing not unlike a Renée Magritte figure in a bowler hat, impressively disappearing at one point through Gregor’s bed as if in some surrealist horror film. Later as the Samsa’s lodger, he becomes every bit the goading, belittling critic of Grete’s violin playing – enough to illicit an unwelcome attack from the ‘thing’ upstairs.

Kafka’s novella is just that. It’s a short story, but with a big punch. This staged production under the artistic direction of Scott Graham can sometimes feel overly drawn out, and there are times when the levels of background sound and music battle with the spoken word. But overall, commendably, it succeeds more in its portrayal of social undercurrents than with sensationalism. While Pacheco’s gymnastic heroics as Gregor the bug capture the eye and the moment, it is in Sissay’s writing we find the real monsters at play.

★★★★☆  Simon Bishop, 13 January, 2024

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton