Many people fear finding creepy crawlies in their bed. Not many wake up to find that they are the creepy crawly in their bed. But this is the fate of Gregor Samsa, the central protagonist in Franz Kafka’s 20th century novella The Metamorphosis.
Based on this terrifying tale about a travelling salesman who awakes one morning to find he has turned into a hideous insect, Metamorphosis, which returns to the Lyric Hammersmith following its success in 2006 and then again in 2008, is a highly physical piece of theatre that has been brought to the stage in a co-production with Icelandic company Vesturport.
Straying slightly from Kafka’s original gothic fable, the production focuses less on Gregor’s personal trauma and more on the ostracism he faces from his despairingly ashamed family. While Ingvar E Sigurðsson makes an eccentric and authoritative father and Kelly Hunter a jumpy and sensitive mother, Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir’s Greta undergoes a metamorphosis of her own, evolving from a sympathetic and caring sister who brings Gregor food and comfort to a heartless and malicious abuser who wants nothing more than to rid her family of their burden.
But there was always going to be one performance here that steals the show. While no attempt has been made to alter Gregor’s visual appearance, Gísli Örn Garðarsson’s highly energetic and physically demanding role compensates entirely, as he portrays every movement of the grotesque being, performing acrobatic somersaults, climbing walls and clambering over furniture.
If Garðarsson’s performance alone wasn’t mind-boggling enough, Börkur Jónsson’s dual layered set sends you spiralling further into Kafka’s disorientating world. While the lower level presents the closest thing the Samsa family has to normality in the form of their drab and dreary living room, above it lies the prison of Gregor’s topsy-turvy room – his bed strapped to the wall and his window looking out from the ceiling – where his suffering is laid bare.
However, it is only upon reaching the play’s moving finale when Jónsson’s ingeniously designed set transforms once again, that we are confronted with the true effects of Gregor’s mental and physical torment. Complemented by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ powerful and poetic score, Gregor’s demise, set against the unremorseful reaction of his family, evokes – with intense clarity – the lasting mood of Kafka’s original text.
Previous report by Matthew Amer (5 October 2006):
The pairing of Icelandic theatre company Vesturport, with its reputation for physical theatre, and the textual skills of Lyric Hammersmith Artistic Director David Farr was destined to create a unique piece of theatre. The collaboration sets the tone for the entire Lyric Hammersmith season, and possibly many more to come with Farr at the helm, as other collaborations pull different specialties together to create exciting new theatre. Matthew Amer was at the first night of Metamorphosis…
The premise for Kafka’s tale is very simple. One morning salesman Gregor Samsa wakes to find he no longer inhabits a human form, but has transformed into an insect, reflecting the shape his life has been making him feel. His family is understandably confused by the whole transformation, moving from fear, to denial, to acceptance before taking a much darker view of their son and sibling.
There are no beetle costumes being brought out of retirement for this production, rather Gísli Örn Gardarsson – playing Gregor – inhabits a world of twisted perspective. While the downstairs of the family home is as one would expect – faded wallpaper, family dining table – Gregor’s room upstairs is flipped through 90 degrees as the wall becomes the floor and the floor becomes the wall. Gardarsson, in ripped work suit, climbs, bounces and swings around the scenery with cockroach-like ease.
While this may all sound like fun and games, and is at times very funny, the stripping away of human sensibilities is devastating to see. The pristine, ordered, drab family members try to continue their pristine, ordered, drab lives, but can never escape from the consequences of the world’s, and their, treatment of Gregor. Nina Dögg Filippusdöttir’s Grete tries hardest to care for her brother, taking over from the stunned parents, but her transformation from naïve, excitable girl to harbinger of doom is almost as affecting as Gregor’s change.
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis provide the score which soundtracks the story unobtrusively but to spine-tingling effect. The joint direction of Farr and Gardarsson, complemented by Hartley T A Kemp’s innovative design, produce moments – and certainly a finale – that could be framed.