Review: Metamorphosis

(Lyric Hammersmith & Vesturport Theatre & Sydney Theatre Company | Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney | Until 2 May)

Sydneysiders are fortunate indeed to be receiving a visit from a small group of British and Icelandic theatre professionals who have brought with them the most stunning and memorable of shows.

There’s no need in this forum to try to add to the already vast file on Franz Kafka, the young, intensely troubled Czechoslavakian genius who wrote Metamorphosis in 1912.

Metamorphosis is a story of alienation. Gregor, a young office worker, wakes one morning to find that he has been transformed into a horrific-looking insect and can no longer be understood by his family, which one by one rejects him so that they can continue “normal” relationships with the rest of the world.

For Kafka, it was a very personal novella which reflected his own family situation, but as David Farr, former artistic director of London’s Lyric Hammersmith and co-director of this production, so succinctly points out, there’s a much more universal theme to Metamorphosis:

“Quite subconsciously, Kafka writes about politics and how we marginalise certain groups and individuals in order to survive. It’s a very frightening vision, but it’s also very funny and very theatrical. For me, Kafka has always attacked a fundamental principle of human beings, which is that in order to survive, a society or group of people sometimes destroys an element within itself.”

Farr and the show’s other co-director, Gisli Örn Gardasson, artistic director of Iceland’s Vesturport Theatre, have brilliantly adapted Kafka’s text for the stage, giving it a sly comic edge that contrasts dramatically with the scariness of the tale that’s unfolding.

Partly, the humour derives from the almost clockwork movements adopted by Gregor’s family — father (Ingvar E Sigurdsson), mother (Edda Arnljotsdotter) and daughter Grete (Unnur Ösp Stefansdottir) — and Jonathan McGuinness in his dual roles as Gregor’s boss and Grete’s suitor.

I particularly enjoyed Grete’s transition from loyal sisterly support to almost-fascist demonisation when the embarrassment of Gregor’s state costs her a marriage proposal.

All four present fine performances, but the stage well and truly belongs to Björn Thors in the lead role of Gregor.

Thors shows enormous strength and athleticism — hanging upside down, clambering along walls, sitting in impossible positions, leaping on to tables — plus a keen sense of timing and dramatic delivery.

I’m sure there would be very few actors, anywhere in the world, capable of taking on the role in the form presented. After all, Thors was apparently a member of Iceland’s national gymnastics team.

Börkur Jonsson’s radical and elaborate stage design greatly enhances the effectiveness of Thors’ gymnastics. The vertical split level between Gregor’s bedroom and the family’s living area below allows him full scope to show off his prowess.

The original musical score — composed by Australian rocker Nick Cave and his fellow Bad Seed Warren Ellis —emerges as another highlight. As is so often the case with Cave’s music, there’s a brooding, threatening undercurrent that I’m sure Kafka would have deemed appropriate to his own plight and his novelisation of it.

There’s not much time left, so make the effort and go see some truly great theatre.

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