Review: Frantic Assembly’s METAMORPHOSIS, York Theatre Royal - Tour

Photo credit: Tristram Kenton

York Theatre Royal seems like the perfect venue for Frantic Assembly’s reinterpretation of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis – with concrete pillars and glass windows bursting forth from the site of the Grade-II listed St Leonard’s Hospital. Built in 1744, it is a stunning amalgam of the original stonework and glass, with honeycomb motif through the recessed lighting and carpet throughout - a glorious meeting of the old and new.

Lemn Sissay OBE and Scott Graham’s reinterpretation takes the familiar story of Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, a man who transforms into a beetle overnight, and asks us to examine the parasitic nature of dependence. There are a number of metaphors at play throughout – the transformation can be seen at points to be an exploration of disability, or queerness, or dehumanisation at the hands of capitalism, though none of them feel that they are explored as fully as perhaps they could be.

As one would expect from Frantic Assembly, the stage is set from the outset with a pulsing, ethereal underscore and flickering lights; Jon Bauser’s set design, accompanied by the video design by Ian William Galloway, creates a definite sense of foreboding from the outset – walls of tightly pulled vellum between the architrave and floor create the shape of the bedroom, and this one set piece becomes the prison of Gregor, with projections supplementing the shadows cast across them. The bedframe – reminiscent of Frantic’s Lovesong – and an armchair, with scant other bedroom furniture, create climbing frames for Felipe Pacheco’s Gregor as he begins the transformation. As the play progresses and Gregor’s sense of reality shifts, the entire set twists, with the walls rippling and distorting. This is most effective at the open of Act 2 when the warped walls and projection of Gregor hanging, spinning from the light fitting, creates a monstrous sense of unreality.

Unlike Berkoff’s original interpretation of Kafka’s novella, Sissay’s adaptation chooses to prolong the tension that leads to the transformation. We see the external pressures placed on Gregor as the chief breadwinner of the family – as a fabric salesman, the routine is repeated several times in the opening ten minutes, and while Grete (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) talks to a framed portrait, dressing herself in bolts of cloth, Gregor emerges from the bed, with gradual difficulty, as he attempts to summon the strength to get through the day. Throughout this opening, the malignant presence of the Chief Clerk is ever present. “A word, Mr Samsa”, he intones, and it is this pressure, as well as the requirement to earn money and provide for Mother and Father, that reduces him to less than a man.

As we might expect of a poet of Lemn Sissay OBE’s calibre, the text is rich and figurative, though it often comes across a little stilted in the mouths of the five actors – in such hyper-naturalistic delivery, the speech can be clunky and distracting, and given the almost constant underscore, it is all delivered at a near-shout. As Mother and Father, Louise May Newberry and Troy Glasgow’s delivery feels almost cod-Shakespearean - while Glasgow’s monologue about dinner parties in Act Two genuinely feels like hard work to get through. Newberry’s ‘gnawing’ monologue at least had physicality to juxtapose against the speech.

In the closing moments, there is a strikingly familiar image in tableaux of the family, reminiscent of the original production of Berkoff’s adaptation, and that is the biggest problem; this is a new adaptation of a production known to be performed in a particularly physical, Berkoffian style, yet it has removed many of those most striking images. The name Frantic Assembly is synonymous with physical theatre, and an audience comes to expect a viscerality and energy in their work. Metamorphosis is lacking in this almost entirely. There are some truly standout visuals – the aforementioned image of Pacheco dangling, or as he climbs the walls and clings to the architrave, are powerful, and the final moments of Act One, hanging under the dressing table before being clad in steel-framed chairs by his family rejecting him, is both effective and deeply affecting – but these moments are few and far between. Even the traditional lifts one associates as a Frantic Assembly trademark are rare. Pacheco is given the greatest opportunity for physicality of the cast, reaching around the armchair with disjointed limbs and convulsing wildly on the floor, but it simply goes to highlight how little the rest of the cast are given.

This is a vital piece of theatre about a person’s place - in society, in their family, in their skin - that sadly struggles to deliver.

*** Three stars

Metamorphosis continues at York Theatre Royal until 14 October before continuing its tour, with further information here.