Theatre / Reviews
Review: Metamorphosis, Bristol Old Vic – ‘Theatre can be so much more than this’
With their movement-focused theatremaking, theatre company Frantic Assembly have had a transformative effect on the way plays are staged, to the point that they are on the curriculum for many school drama courses.
Lemn Sissay is an acclaimed poet whose work is widely studied in schools. Franz Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis is generally considered an essential part of the Western literary canon. For all those reasons, it’s no surprise that a disconcertingly large proportion of the audience for Frantic Assembly’s staging of Lemn Sissay’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis consists of teenagers on school trip pilgrimages to sup at the font of all that creativity.
The question is what they will take away from it. Because there is a lot that is good in this production, but also a lot that’s very bad. The worry is that either a) they will assume that this thinly plotted exercise in overstyled drama is what all theatre is like and refuse to ever venture into the stalls again, or b) they will assume that this thinly plotted exercise in overstyled drama is what all theatre is like and grow up to make more of the same. Either would be a regrettable outcome, because theatre can be so much more than this production.
is needed now More than ever
In adapting Kafka’s story for the stage, Sissay has – quite sensibly – switched around the timeline into something more linear. This telling does not open, like the novella, with Gregor Samsa (Felipe Pacheco) waking to find himself transformed into a beetle.
Instead, the frenetic opening scenes capture Gregor’s spiral from keen young hotshot fabric salesman into overstressed fabric salesman who is failing to hit the impossible targets set by his boss, the Chief Clerk (Joe Layton).
Pacheco’s astounding physicality shines in these balletic scenes – the Frantic Assembly style made perfect flesh. The message seems clear: when the moment of metamorphosis arrives, it will be the physical manifestation of burnout. It’s a nice interpretation which speaks readily to a modern audience all too familiar with the stresses of hustle culture and the gig economy.
And then the moment comes, triggered by overwork and a semi-incestuous incident with Gregor’s adopted sister Grete (Hannah Sinclair Robinson). Gregor locks himself in his room, refusing to come out despite the urgings of his mother (Louise Mai Newberry) and father (Troy Glasgow).
We see him writhing on the floor of his bedroom as his family panic on the forestage. But there is one Big Problem: he still looks like the Gregor from the preceding scenes. Despite the freakish praying mantis-like creature on the poster, and the fact that the one thing that everyone knows about Kafka’s story is the beetle bit, director Scott Graham has opted to entirely forego the eponymous metamorphosis.
Pacheco may spend his insect phase writhing, distorting and dangling from various bits of the ceiling in a most astounding display of athletic ability, but there is nothing other than the audience’s pre-knowledge to suggest that he has undergone an unexpected and irreversible transformation into a cockroach.
This is not the only failure of creative confidence. In the second half, Sissay seems to abandon is previous thesis that Gregor’s metamorphosis was induced by the pressures of the mercantile system, and floats a whole new proposition: lengthy monologues from both mother and father explain that Gregor was adopted as a foundling, and that this is the cause of his monstrous manifestation.
The piece gets quite lost during these lengthy monologues, a cascade of words during which actors are floated around in Frantic Assembly style for no real purpose other than to cover the fact that Sissay has abandoned the first rule of writing, and is telling not showing.
The speechifying is not aided by Graham’s choice to have the actors deliver their lines in an overprojected singsong manner, in a style familiar to anyone who has experience Brechtian alienation effect. The problem is that it works just as Brecht would have intended: it disconnects the onlooker from a text which should be poetic (through Sissay’s words) and a story which should be mentally and emotionally engaging (as Kafka wrote it). The end-result is that the second half
drags, and Gregor’s final expiry comes as a relief not only to his family, but also to the audience.
There is much to admire in this production. Those keen drama students can enjoy an in-the-flesh experience of Frantic Assembly’s astounding fusion of acting, movement and dance.
Jon Bausor’s set is a phenomenal sight: what seems to be a solid 1950s kitchen sink drama setting reveals itself to have walls that ripple and a bed that can achieve remarkable vanishing effects. It creates an unworldly effect in Gregor’s room which goes some way – but not far enough – to compensate for the total absence of any beetleness.
But although it works some of the time as eye-pleasing spectacle, this production fails as a piece of theatre. It lacks coherence, consistency, and a script delivered in a way that respect and engages with the onlooker.
All too often, the outstanding physical theatre feels like a bolt-on, put in because that’s what people expect of Frantic Assembly, rather than an integral part of the performance. There is a sense that stylistic flourishes which felt fun in the rehearsal room take precedence over the audience experience.
Hopefully all those keen students on their school trips will not be left assuming that this thinly plotted exercise in overstyled drama is what all theatre is like, but will instead recognise that they can take some ideas and go on to make something better, more engaging and more likely to send audiences home enriched. Because that’s what really good theatre does.
Metamorphosis (age recommendation 14+) is at Bristol Old Vic on January 10-20 at 7.30pm, with additional 2.30pm matinee shows on Saturday (no shows on Sunday). Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
All photos: Tristram Kenton
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