Kafka's Monkey
Based on A Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka. Adaptation by Colin Teevan
Kathryn Hunter is a woman playing a monkey playing a man in this world premiere of Kafka's masterful short story.
Imprisoned in a cage, and desperate to escape, the ape-man reveals his rise through the ranks of the beasts to become a walking, talking, spitting, smoking, hard-drinking man of the stage.
Reminiscent of Kafka's most famous short story Metamorphosis in which a young man transforms into a beetle, A Report to the Academy follows Kafka's tradition of the Grotesque with his brilliant mixture of absurdity and pain.
Deeply theatrical, witty and absurd, Colin Teevan's new adaptation of this milestone of modern literature places a profound and startling mirror in front of a modern day audience and reveals a world in which humans appear ape-like and apes humane. Kafka's Monkey offers us an insight into the anguish of attempting to belong but always being kept outside - a theme which has remarkable contemporary relevance in our globalised world.
With live music and physical performance the show draws on the rich associations of the variety stage and incorporates elements of Berlin cabaret, street dance and stand up comedy.