On Tuesday of 3rd week, an adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial comes to the BT. The central character, Josef K, is a man caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare: he has been accused of a crime, but no one will tell him what it is. He is sure of his innocence, but finds himself increasingly trapped in legal jargon and unanswered questions. The play follows his case, from his accusation to its disturbing finish.
Directed by Sam Ward and with a cast of six who will all be on stage most of the time, the play aims to recreate the claustrophobia experienced by Josef K in the dark space of the Burton Taylor. The play blurs the line between what is actually happening and what is just in K’s head: I saw one scene where K meets a painter, Titorelli, and is made to feel like an accessory to his erratic performance. The two are surrounded by the rest of the cast, who become animated portraits which speak and interact with K and the painter.
The novel was adapted by Steven Berkoff, who says that the sparse staging and props mean the scene can change ‘quicker than the story’: the audience’s imagination maximises the space of a theatre without long scene changes. “A set should be able to melt in an instant and never represent a real heavy piece of pseudo-reality” – in Ward’s production, each member of the cast has a host of tiny characters to play in order to ‘furnish’ the stage. This is a departure from the true-to-life staging which Berkoff describes as “lumbering pieces of dead weight”.
Berkoff is involved with ‘total-theatre’, a style of physical theatre described by one critic as “in-yer-face theatre” – music, visuals, movement and text are all given equal importance. The audio component of Ward’s production is original: there are various sound effects that the group have put together themselves.
Each sound effect is less of a representation of real life and more of an idea, inserted into the audience’s mind through sound. The ‘rumble’ is, as the name suggests, a deep grinding that starts imperceptibly at a very low volume. The audience will hear it and register it subconsciously until it becomes loud enough for them to consciously wonder what it is. It doesn’t come from anything onstage but instead represents K’s private doubts of his own innocence, doubts that he will not express to any of the other characters or even to himself. The ‘sexscape’ is a perverse combination of screams and moans, some from pain and some from pleasure.
The idea of contrast is key to The Trial – Josef K is played by Alex Shavick, who is the straight actor to the rest of the cast’s hysterics. He gets used, abused and seduced throughout – but says that the development of his character makes him interesting to act. K’s passivity becomes frustration as his quest goes on, so he goes from being a pawn to someone who is at least partially a master of his own fate.
There is also a section where K is a director, organising actors to tell a story to another character, hauling the chorus into a piece of metadrama. The adaptation is meant to make you think but primarily entertain: there are plenty of comic touches and, in the cast’s own words, this dystopia also has “a lot of straddling”.
