A re-imagining of Franz Kafka's novel for the stage
Lyn Gardner reviews a production of Franz Kafka's
The Trial at this year's Edinburgh festival:
An apparently welcoming hand pulls me through the door. Before I can scream, I'm blindfolded and spun around. The darkness is complete. I can just make out pinpricks of light. Sinister whisperings echo in my ear; someone strokes my arm. I'm moved around, giddy and disorientated. This is the brilliant start to Belt Up Theatre's version of Kafka's novella about Josef K, a man whose world is turned upside-down when he is accused of a nameless crime and must prove his innocence. The audience's physical disorientation matches Josef K's rising panic as he finds himself in a world that is simultaneously familiar and entirely unrecognisable. [Read More]
2 Comments:
Since when did a 250 page work of fiction equal a "novella"?
Also, this production sounds like the usual impressionistic nightmare that The Trial is definitively NOT. It should be played quietly, with comedy, with realism. One suspects they've not read the book.
Reading The Trial for the first time I was struck most of all by its quiet, unassuming realism. It was in many ways the last thing I expected from a (so-called) modernist writer, and I suspect one of the first things that a reader will notice. It's a shame that this quality isn't embraced in interpretations of the work: a real missed opportunity.
One might argue that the greatest interpretations of Kafka's work, or his complex style, have been outside the arena of the straightforward adaptation. I think there's a case to be made that Hitchcock's uncanny everyday owes something to Kafka, and if not Hitchcock then certainly David Lynch or David Cronenberg.
As for this misunderstanding of the novella: perhaps the writer is sardonically referring to one of those terrible minute-print editions of Kafka's book. (However doubtful this may be.) I've seen editions so cramped and disfigured I'm surprised they breach the ten-page mark.
Best,
Rhys
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