Tuesday, 10th October 2023 at York Theatre Royal.
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“This is a twisted house” says a visitor to the Samsa abode – and it’s a verdict which pretty much sums up this tale and this production.
Metamorphosis is both a study of man’s inhumanity to man within the context of financial stresses and an ambitious feat of abstract performance when adapted for the stage. The story follows Gregor: a travelling salesman; son to two demanding parents; brother to a sister who matures to cruel indifference over the course of the play. Gregor awakes one day to find that he has transformed into an insect. Naturally, this alarms his family in various ways, but none more so than the realisation that the sole breadwinner will no longer be able to keep the household afloat.
Celebrated poet and writer Lemn Sissay has taken on adapting Franz Kafka’s famous novella, and the production certainly leans towards poetic stylings as refrains and free-flowing approaches to narrative abound. While this contributes to the overarching sense of distortion and lacking stability demanded by Kafka’s ambiguous story, it does make for challenging viewing at times as a montage plays out just a few too many times on a hamster wheel or scenes shift at chaotic speed.
With Frantic Assembly and director Scott Graham at the helm, there’s plenty of visual innovation to admire though – from literal climbing of walls, to hanging from a light shade, to good old fashioned expressive physicality. Felipe Pacheco is superb in the challenging role of Gregor, and he communicates the transformation from overworked breadwinner to a debilitated creature with a fearless performance supported by a range of bold devices.
Jon Bauser’s set is pivotal here (literally in fact, as the set shifts periodically), acting as a perfect backdrop to Gregor’s tortured journey. Everything is off-kilter in this space, and the increasingly fractious household dynamics are echoed by physical manipulations of the room, which do well to capture the sense of horror associated with the tale. That’s not to say this is horror though – it seeks to communicate the sense of unhinged danger we associate with those who have lost their grip on reality, but it never reaches beyond a sense of warped time, place and circumstance.
It’s also impressive to see the way the tone of the entire construction can be dictated by Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting design, which easily manipulates the space to mirror the shifts between domestic life and extraordinary happenings. And underpinning the sense of doom throughout are Stefan Janik’s compositions, which are near-constant and offer a pulsating, tense underscoring to each scene. Ian William Galloway’s video designs provide eerie backdrops of silhouettes not too far from the impression of a foetus in the womb, gradually taking shape and becoming more powerful as Gregor’s transformation deepens. And Galloway’s video designs also, along with Becky Gunstone’s costume designs, place us firmly in a bygone time looking at dark themes which never seem to fall from relevance.
While Pacheco’s central performance undoubtedly provides the core strength of this production, he is of course not alone in the telling of this tale. Joe Layton is great as both the Lodger and Chief Clerk, finding firm footholds in both ominous presence and welcome light relief. Troy Glasgow, Louise Mai Newbury and Hannah Sinclair Robinson, as Mr and Mrs Samsa and daughter Grete respectively, run the gamut of a family on an inescapable trajectory of economic woes, moral flaws and intriguing secrets.
Full of bold choices and a heavy reliance on an audience’s ability to leave notions of realism at the door, this production does well to communicate the intense study of human nature in Kafka’s disturbing tale.
Frantic Assembly’s Metamorphosis is at York Theatre Royal until 14th October 2023 – tickets can be found here. The production then continues to tour until 2nd March 2024 and more information and tickets can be found here.
Images: Tristram Kenton
Always Time For Theatre 
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