From an old post ( Liverpool Playhouse, Feb ), but perhaps someone saw this production and would like to comment in theatre group ?

This was a hard one to pull off. by Icelandic company Vesturport . Gisli Orn Gardasrson adapted Kafka's work primarily by showcasing his own tremendous physicality, which eliminated the risk of the audience giggling at a costume with coat-hanger antennae. As Gregor , the man-morph , he scuttled around the walls and ceiling of his perspectively challenged bedroom with consumate athleticism and admirable unadorned beetlyness.

Borkur Jonsson's set was the other show-stealer, with a cut-away upstairs/downstairs . Downstairs was the genteel-shabby living room , whilst Gregor's bedroom shifted through 90o to present an Escher-like bird's-eye view, What technical wizardry allowed Gregor to bounce off the trampoline floor one minute, and other players to walk solidly on it the next I don't know, but highly effective it was too.

Kafka's dark irony was well-served , many lines being bravely played for laughs .

I'm not entirely sure that the overriding impression I should have left with was '....cor, Gregor was fit '..... when he was meant to symbolize such a disabled, vulnerable and despised creature...but there you go !

Nick Cave's score was appropriately....Cavey.... the audience having their nerves well and truly jangled to underpin the family's descent into monstrosity (being only human).

The production was finely done and accessible, living up to it's billing as a tragi-comedy .

It's all too easy to assume that Kafka was relentlessly bleak , when he had such a surrealistic fine touch in portraying alienation through absurdity.

I would take issue on only two counts.......

Gregor was way too sympathetic and attractive a protagonist . Remembering the era, we should have been given a clearer idea of the involuntary, impossible burden he became to his family that allowed them to justify his neglect and desire his death .

And the cleaning-lady was not a disposable role.

For me 'Metamorphosis' was somewhat akin to 'Sweeny Todd' in respect that there was the unsettling moment of realization at the beginning ( ' so that's how they're going to play it ' ), the lights went up as I was thinking ( 'well....fuck me !), the sun set on remorseless criticism and came back up to me opining that actually it was bloody brilliant !!.