It is linguistically playful, politically needling and gives the actors long speeches to sink their teeth into. But Lemn Sissay’s version of the Franz Kafka novella is also low on narrative tension. It is more poetic than dramatic.
The playwright is initially drawn to the theme of transformation. Where Gregor Samsa (Felipe Pacheco) is a fabric salesman, offering his customers reinvention through fashion, his sister Grete (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) is transitioning through adolescence, trying out catwalk poses and playing with her appearance. It is a fertile idea in a story about a man who turns into an insect, but one Sissay discards. Taking over is a view of Gregor as a manifestation of the ills of capitalism.
