KAFKA at the Finborough Theatre
★★
“the lack of structure or setting or context make any attempt to understand what is happening impossible”
Franz Kafka is an extraordinary literary figure, with a wealth of brilliant works that encapsulate the human experience. Over the course of eighty minutes, writer and performer Jack Klaff delivers a lecture on Kafka’s life and works, impersonating an eclectic group of fifty characters, from Max Brod to Albert Einstein. The play uses minimal set and design, using a singular stool, no score or sound effects and minimal lighting states, with Klaff carrying the weight of the performance. An audible “shhhh” comes from the wings to signal the start of the play. Later we learn this was supposedly Kafka’s favoured start to a piece.
Throughout the play, characters introduce themselves before launching into an expositional monologue. Vague outlines of a plot can be extracted, but much like Kafka’s work, the show is an experience of eternal confusion. There are kernels of intrigue scattered throughout, but the lack of structure or setting or context make any attempt to understand what is happening impossible. Extracts from Kafka’s work such as ‘The Trial’, ‘The Castle’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ are performed, wrapped up among various character’s monologues about their relationship to Kafka. They rattle off facts about themselves, often never appearing again. The various voices of the characters were ill defined and rarely identifiable until at least three sentences in. Despite Klaff’s tearful performance, the lack of clarity makes emotional moments impossible to be moved by. Accents come and go, physical attributes are barely held and transitions are indiscernible. Despite fifty characters mentioned in the script, roughly a dozen of them are distinct. The threads of the show are totally unknowable, at no point was it clear of who, what, where or why something was happening on stage.
There are brief parts which are genuinely interesting. Annoyingly, the final few minutes tell more about the titular character than the entire play. In an interlude from the perspective of a stand-up comedian, come some much needed levity. There are specific jokes that are humorous and reflect on Kafka’s impact, including discussion of ‘esque’ as a suffix. As a celebration of Kafka, there is little to be gained in knowledge about his life or works from this piece. The play is mostly inaccessible without astute knowledge of his short stories and the nature of how his work was published. There is mention of his ancestry and speculation of his sexuality, but little exploration of who he was as a man in any emotional capacity. There are brief glimpses into how his work may have been influenced by his life; it is set up that Kafka had a fear of ‘butcher knives’ because of a family member, his most famous literary character dies by said knife.
Klaff utilises a technique in which random phrases are spoken at high volume, as if he attempting to jolt the audience to attention. Whilst reminding the audience to listen, it revealed how little attention had been captured. The eighty minutes dragged on like a surrealist nightmare, enclosed by the obligation that as a reviewer I must watch the whole thing; truly a Kafkaesque experience.
KAFKA at the Finborough Theatre
Reviewed on 13th June 2024
by Jessica Potts
Photography by Marilyn Kingwill
Previously reviewed at this venue:
THE TAILOR OF INVERNESS | ★★★ | May 2024
BANGING DENMARK | ★★★ | April 2024
FOAM | ★★★★ | April 2024
JAB | ★★★★ | February 2024
THE WIND AND THE RAIN | ★★★ | July 2023
SALT-WATER MOON | ★★★★ | January 2023
PENNYROYAL | ★★★★ | July 2022
THE STRAW CHAIR | ★★★ | April 2022
KAFKA
KAFKA
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