REVIEW: KAFKA Translated, Devised and Performed by Jack Klaff at Finborough Theatre 11 June - 6 July 2024

‘Klaff commands the stage, he demands our attention as he races to a brilliant finish.’ ★★★★

KAFKA is adapted, scripted & performed by Jack Klaff who premiered the play at Cheltenham Literature Festival in 1983. This timely revival commemorates the centenary of Kafka’s passing and celebrates his genius, but also creates the world around him from the point of view of a dazzling array of characters. 

For those of us who have found the world which Kafka creates in his novels fascinatingly obscure, Klaff gives us insights into Kafka’s mind. His personal backstory, his sense of alienation, and his Jewish heritage; all apparently feed into the strangeness of which the term Kafka-esque has become part of our common language.   

Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. He read law at deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität (in Prague) which is where he met fellow law student, Max Brod. It is Brod, who famously refused to burn Kafka’s texts going against the dying man’s wishes.  Brod is one of the people who pops up several times in Klaff’s collection of characters and helps to ground the play; giving a thread on which the many others can be attached.

This really is a show for anyone who is interested in Kafka’s works and life. Klaff gives us a blindingly non-stop larger than life epic. Klaff commands the stage, he demands our attention as he races to a brilliant finish.  The only possible downside is that in showing so many characters and so many references and extracts of Kafka’s writing, some of it might be lost on the viewer. Fear not, because the programme has all the notes anyone could possibly wish for, and after the show, audiences should feel so much richer in their understanding thanks to Klaff’s excellent research which has informed his portrayals.

If an 80-minute one man show is hard to sustain, Klaff does have some help from the lighting design (by Colin Watkeys), which adds interest and is particularly powerful in the final scene.   Appropriately, Klaff ends the piece with Joseph K’s execution from Kafka’s The Trial.  Time appears to slow down, whereas other scenes flash before the eyes, Klaff gives full value to this. For anyone who has read the scene, his rendition is so perfectly formed as bring it to life in all its sharply refined horror, worth the entrance money alone.

Go and see it; it is for anyone who would like to be closer to Kafka and maybe to grasp a little more of the workings of his interior self. Klaff appears to have a fantastic handle on his subject.

REVIEW: KAFKA Translated, Devised and Performed by Jack Klaff at Finborough Theatre 11 June - 6 July 2024

Box Office: https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/

Cast JACK KLAFF

Director COLIN WATKEYS

Original Production Directed by NICK WARD

Set Designer JAROSLAV NEMRAVA

Sound Designer ZDENA SEDLAČEK

Stage Manager TED WALLIKER

Lighting Designer COLIN WATKEYS

Photography: credit Marilyn Kingwill 

Reviewed by Heather Jeffery, Editor of LPT magazine