KAFKA'S MONKEY To 9 April.

London.
KAFKA’S MONKEY
by Franz Kafka (A Report to an Academy) adapted by Colin Teevan.

Young Vic Theatre (The Maria) 66 The Cut SE1 8LZ To 9 April 2009.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 3.45pm.
Runs 50 minutes No interval.

TICKETS: 020 7922 2922.
www.youngvictheatre.org
Review: Carole Woddis 19 March 19.

Swinging performance aping human foibles.
It’s amazing how this artful short story by Franz Kafka, written nearly a hundred years ago, strikes such a modern chord. But then Kafka, obsessed with the weird and malign in human behaviour was a social scientist before his time. He and Desmond Morris (of `The Naked Ape’ fame) would have had a lot in common in their view of man’s closer proximity to apes than we ever like to admit.

Kafka’s Monkey, adapted by Colin Teevan, runs under an hour. Yet despite its brevity, it carries considerable pungency.

Anyone who saw Kafka’s Metamorphosis last year at the Lyric Hammersmith will remember the strong emotional tug exerted by the juxtaposed idea of man and beetle, given extraordinary physical expression by Icelandic star, Gísli Örn Gardarsson. So it is here in reverse, as Kathryn Hunter, in evening suit and cane, tells the story of how he, `Red Peter’, made the journey from young ape to human.

Recounted as though a report to an Academy of scholars, it’s one of those salutary tales which whilst purporting to be about one thing is really about another - for in the end, it is not the ape that is under scrutiny so much as us humans. Our little ape wins his freedom precisely by mimicking some of the worst habits of his human captors, becoming a variety entertainer and thus becoming `accepted’. Ever the Kafka scenario, this is a tale of cruelty but one of ironic victory, the outsider becoming the insider.

Hunter, typically, is by turns endearing and sly. She is also physically extraordinary. Director Walter Meierjohann uses Hunter’s small, double-jointed frame to turn her inside out, crouching ape-like, swinging from bars and contorting her body to show the desperate animal crammed inside a tiny cage. Nor does the animal similarity end there.

Using her large sad eyes to swivel and draw the audience, Hunter is overlooked by a large projected photo of a young ape. Nostrils broad and flared, he looks out at us with sorrowful, intensely human eyes. Who now exactly is the entrapped and the enslaved, who ultimately triumphant?

Red Peter, the Ape: Kathryn Hunter.

Director: Walter Meierjohann.
Designer: Steffi Wurster
Lighting: Mike Gunning.
Sound/Music: Nikola Kodjabashia.
Movement: Ilan Reichel.
Costume: Richard Hudson.
Hat Tricks Instructor: Stewart Pemberton.
Assistant director: Mia Theil Have.

2009-03-26 01:17:16