Alan Bennet is famed as a comedian, as the voice of Winnie the Pooh and for many of his plays, but not, strangely, for Kafka’s Dick. However, directors Ellie Keel and Tris Puri bring this rarely performed play to life with wonderfully comic subtlety during 8th week at the Burton Taylor Studio.
This humorously surreal work is based around a visit by Franz Kafka and his friend and biographer Max Brod (both of whom are dead) to the house of an insurance salesman, Sydney and his wife Linda, a nurse. Unperturbed by their deadness, Sydney, a Kafka fan, uses the visit as an opportunity to quiz both men on Kafka’s life for a biography that he intends to write. Confusion unsurprisingly follows, punctuated by the arrival of Kafka’s father Herman with various revelations about his son’s genitals and ending in a visit to heaven. The comedy plays upon the nature of biography and how artists are often perceived through facts about their life as opposed to their works – something as relevant today as it must have been when Bennet wrote the piece in 1986. As Sydney notes: ‘This is England. Facts… pass for culture. Gossip is the acceptable face of intellect.’
This universal message is delivered, as you might expect with Bennet, with an easy humour by the cast. Although I was faced with a somewhat empty stage (promises of a set for the actual performance have been made), what took place upon it was a pleasure to watch. The opening scene between a dying Kafka (Sanjay Mewada) and Brod (Peter Huhne) is a little uncertain at first but quickly warms up as the dynamic livens between Huhne’s comically ridiculous and very imposing presence and the self-pityingly huddled figure of Mewada in the bed. As is often seen with Bennet a very serious message – that of the future of Kafka’s work – is delivered through a humorous medium, and the two actors dealt with this very successfully, achieving an appropriate balance of tone.
The production improves further when we are transported to the present day – to Sydney and Linda’s (Alex Stutt and Lara McIvor) home. McIvor especially gives a very impressive performance, displaying that unawareness of her own comedy that the best comic actors possess. The surreal humour develops subtly without ever becoming unpleasantly absurd, something that is as much due to the acting as to Bennet’s script and some of the interchanges (the sexual tension between McIvor and Huhne being especially noteworthy) are incredibly funny.
As I only saw the play in the midst of its rehearsal stages, undoubtedly it could and will be tightened but despite the occasional flicker this should be an impressive production. Definitely recommended.
4 STARS
