Review: Kafka's Monkey

Kafka's Monkey is based on Kafka's darkly comic story, A Report to An Academy, in which an ape, Red Peter, lectures the "honoured members of the Academy" on his transformation into a cultured European man. Shot and captured on the Gold Coast of Africa, Red Peter is then confined in a cage in the bowels of a ship, where he learns the niceties of human behaviour - spitting, drinking rum and finally speech - as a means of survival, a "way out" that, he is at pains to point out, has nothing to do with freedom.


It's often said that this story, first published in a Zionist magazine, is a satire on the assimilation of Jews into European society, but it's impossible to read it and not to think also of the "primitive savages" - Indigenous people from Africa, the Americas, the Pacific and Australia - who were exhibited in sideshows even as recently as the early 20th century. Red Peter remarks that when he arrived in Europe, he had a choice between "the Zoological Gardens and the variety stage", which is not so far from the historical truth; Carl Hagenbeck, often considered the father of the modern zoo, was also a famed exhibitor of "primitive" people, whom he displayed in simulacra of their natural habitats, frolicking near the exotic animals.

Part science exhibit, part freak show, Red Peter embodies those who are "other" in colonialist western culture, burying their former identities beneath the conventional apparel and habits of so-called civilised man, or even, as Red Peter says, forgetting them. "Without the most profound inward calm," says Red Peter, "I could never have found my way out"; but the calmness he describes - attained as he is crushed into a tiny barred cage - is the calmness of trauma, the stillness that emerges from the clarity of knowing that the only choice he has is between acceptance of his situation, or death. And Red Peter - unlike the "bewildered, half-broken" chimpanzee from whom he "takes comfort" at night - is a survivor.

It's unsurprising that this fascinating fable should be a popular target for theatrical adaptation: according to the program, it's often performed unadapted in Germany. I saw a performance of it at Anthill many years ago featuring Bob Burton, and of which regrettably I remember little, aside from the fact that I thought it very fine. This acclaimed production from the Young Vic features a remarkable physical performance from Kathryn Hunter, with an adaptation by Colin Teevan that imports some details from two extra fragments Kafka wrote about Red Peter that never made it into the final draft, but which otherwise doesn't mess much with the text.

The strange thing is that the production didn't seem to me at all like Kafka. Yes, it's his text, albeit translated and slightly adapted; yes, it's his concept. But the opaque darkness that moves under his sardonic humour, even the strange surreal precision of his unique vision, seem blurred, withheld; this monkey wants us to like him. The calm, even arrogant self-contempt that strikes me most forcibly in the story seems here transformed into a plea for understanding. It's a subtle transformation that changes the story into something less pitiless, and less cold. And, for my money, much less powerful.

There's no denying the quality of Kathryn Hunter's performance. She emerges on stage in a black hat and frock coat, her body subtly distorted by both her costume and her stance, her arm twisted up behind her in an ape-like gesture that thrusts her torso forward, even her hands twisted into longer, prehensile shapes, her eyes shifting from side to side in a kind of slow motion panic. You have absolutely no trouble believing in her half-human, half-ape condition; she apes humanity, just as she humanises the ape.

Within the performance are little eddies of comedy: she offers a banana to audience members ("I am banana intolerant"), and searches for lice in another's hair. Under Walter Meierjohann's direction, her performance is beautifully modulated, physically astounding and always riveting. Yet I walked out feeling that I had witnessed a virtuosic diversion, a highly skilled rendering down of a complex and disturbing text into something more easily digestible.

Aside from the little comic apologias, which distract from Kafka's sternly impersonal reportage, the production seemed uni-dimensional. Nikola Kodjabashia's soundscape - silence for most of the time, punctuated by abrupt snatches of music hall, or a dim chord - seldom went beyond the illustrative, and felt puzzlingly unintegrated; the lighting and set somehow fell between two stools, being neither rich nor detailed enough to become meaningful elements of the production, but not minimal enough either to be a stark framing of the performance (I found myself longing for no lighting or design at all). The production seems tacked together, a vaudeville that assumes a comfortable relationship between audience and performer, and which takes care never to disturb it. Which in itself feels rather un-Kafka.

Picture: Kathryn Hunter in Kafka's Monkey.

Kafka's Monkey, based on A Report to An Academy by Franz Kafka, adapted by Colin Teevan, directed by Walter Meierjohann, performed by Kathryn Hunter. Set by Steffi Wurster, costume by Richard Hudson, lighting design by Mike Gunning, sound and music by Nikola Kodjabashia. Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse, until May 9.