The great Czech writer Franz Kafka’s novel ‘The Trial’ tells Joseph K’s story, a young man who wakes up one morning to see two men arresting him for an unknown offence. Unbelievably, his day just gets worse from there, as he tries to work out what crime he has exactly committed and how he can extricate himself from his situation.
Everything compounds in Matthew Lutton’s production of Louise Fox’s stage adaptation for the Sydney Theatre Company to create a disturbing, challenging night at the theatre. Lutton’s production shakes one up, true to the role Kafka saw for the arts, ‘a work must be the axe for the frozen sea within us’.
Claude Marcos’s box revolve set creates an immediately oppressive atmosphere. Paul Jackson’s lighting is stark and disorientating. Ash Gibson Greig’s shrill soundscape keeps one constantly on edge.
The performances are pitched at an extreme, intense level. With his shock of dark hair, Ewen Leslie as Joseph K is in the zone for the whole performance and only comes up for breath when taking his bow at the show’s end. The two actresses, Rita Kalnejais and Belinda McClory, give provocative, disturbing performances as Joseph K’s female teasers and tormentors. John Gaden, as always, leaves his a strong imprint in two roles as Joseph K’s nosy landlord and his persecutory lawyer.
The world presented is a world where everything is askew for poor Joseph K….where the law’s delay, as the Bard put it in Hamlet’s famous speech, drives him to distraction…where his sense of guilt spirals out of all proportion…where K can’t move forward, much like Kafka said of his own character, ‘my life is a hesitation before birth’… where life’s dark side is presented to him without relief, and he cannot get any rest.
A Sydney Theatre Company, Melbourne Malthouse and ThinIce production, ‘The Trial’ plays Wharf 1 at the Sydney Theatre Company until Saturday 16th October, 2010
