‘Trial’ and ‘Metamorphosis’, both adapted by Berkoff, at Local Theaters
by Gary Tischler
Reading works by Franz Kafka is no day at the beach. Nor is watching plays written by British playwright Steven Berkoff. So it’s probably a major case of serendipity and coincidence that not one, but two Kafka works, adapted by Berkoff, are being staged by two of Washington’s smaller but very original and style-oriented theater companies.
Scena Theatre and Artistic Director Robert McNamara are putting on Kafka’s “The Trial” at the downtown Warehouse Theatre. It’s based on Kafka’s novel in which an increasingly bewildered average Joe gets caught up in the mindlessly gnawing teeth of the state bureaucracy, accused of unnamed crimes, trying to hopelessly and helplessly defend himself.
Meanwhile, the Catalyst Theater Company on Capitol Hill is staging an intensely focused production of “Metamorphosis,” Kafka’s short story about a man who slowly turns
into a hideous insect.
To double the coincidence, both plays are adaptations by Berkoff, the iconoclastic British playwright (“Kvetch,” “Decadence,” “Brighton Beach Scumbags”). As an actor, he specialized in sneering villains, often in big-budget action films of the 1980s such as “Octopussy,” “Rambo” and “Beverly Hills Cop.”
Of course, producing an adaptation is really doing an adaptation of an adaptation, which sounds very Kafkaesque. It all depends on style, space, size and approach.
McNamara and Scena—which has put on Berkoff’s adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe works such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”—clearly have an affinity for Berkoff, but maybe not so much for Kafka. “The Trial,” with a large cast headed by Chris Henley, has a rather jaunty approach that belies the sinister, heartless, detail-obsessed forces that build up against the hapless hero.
Berkoff’s plays have a merciless quality to them, but they’re not without entertainment value. Henley, as Joseph K., a clerk in a prominent bank, sees himself as a man of some importance living a life of certitude. One day two men show up to arrest him for unknown crimes. The rest is not so much downhill as it is a roller-coaster ride of chaos, fear and the bewildering force of the unknown. He’s now in the maw of the state machinery.
There’s an inevitability about his situation that is frightening—the feel of a treadmill, but a treadmill that’s densely populated, uneven, full of bumps and characters that jump on and off, experiences that seem to rip through Joseph K. Everything is strange and crazy and scary.
It’s also lively. Joseph K. has a great deal of company. He’s surrounded by a cast of characters that remind you of a circus—the large lawyer, surrounded by sexy women, the guys in the derby hats, the bank employee, the thugs, the creepy guy, the stripper, the mistress. Here, the proceedings are stylized and stylish.
“Metamorphosis,” on the other hand, is claustrophobic, and in the small, narrow Catalyst Theater space, there’s no escaping what’s going on. Jim Petosa directs the production with tremendous force and imagination.
One day, Gregor Samsa, a feverish young man who’s taken on the burden of supporting his whole family with his salesman job, wakes up in considerable pain and finds himself turning into an insect.
This development—shocking, horrific and painful—changes everything for his nearly impoverished family, which includes a disabled father, loving mother and young sister. How they—and his boss and a potential tenant—respond to Gregor is at the heart of the play.
Gregor’s affliction is at once literal and metaphorical, and the metaphor can play to larger issues, including the burdens of the stranger in our midst. But the way Catalyst stages this has immense power, not the least of which is the performance of Scott Fortier (Catalyst’s artistic director) in an almost Christ-like portrait of human anguish that also requires the gifts of a contortionist and acrobat.
Because the space is vertical and narrow, because Gregor is often literally confined in a cage-like area, and because there is no escape for him and the audience, the play—without an intermission—is often wounding. But both Berkoff and Kafka know how to translate these wounds into a powerful and enlightening experience for the audience.
“Metamorphosis” runs through Oct. 15 at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, 545 7th St., SE. Tickets are $25 to $30. For more information, please call (202) 494-TIXS or visit www.catalysttheater.org. “The Trial” runs through Oct. 16 at the Warehouse Theatre, 1021 7th St., NW. Tickets are $25 to $30. For more information, please call (202) 703-684-7990 or visit www.scenatheatre.org.
Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.
