Kafka and Son – Theaturtle (Assembly)

Alon Nashman talks about how his Kafka and Son is returning to Edinburgh Fringe.

How has the play developed in the past year, as it has discovered success? Why have you decided to return to the Fringe?

Last year I was completely bitten by the Festival, intoxicated with the cross-pollination of ideas and performance. The Flawless crew and Maori cheiftan Tame Iti of MAU came to see my play about Kafka, and I saw them in action. I knew I had to return, and I knew I wanted to introduce Edinburgh audiences to the work of Wajdi Mouawad, playwright of Alphonse. I also realized how much I needed to bring back Kafka and Son. Some great feedback, reviews and comments came out near the end of the run. It was just picking up momentum as we were leaving.

When the play was developed, why did Kafka stand out for you as a subject in himself?

Kafka can be seen as the canary in the mine of the 20th century, particularly sensitive to the absurdity, nastiness, and the beauracratic precision of the new fascism. Kafka's writing is full of foreboding, embarassing in it's honesty, but above all to me, delightfully, darkly hilarious.

How does the play approach the father-son relationship? Is there anything universal in Kafka's relationship to his dad?

When director Mark Cassidy introduced me to the revelatory letter Kafka wrote to his father I sensed its inherent theatricality. Kafka wrote his father into the letter, as a challanger, an accuser, someone always ready to set the record straight. Towards the end of the letter the Father is conjured in full, and like a Frankenstein monster he is unleased, and father essentially destroys his son's arguments. So there is a built-in dialogue between father and son, an epic conflict between mighty opposites.

What process did you use to develop the performance from the original letter?

Adaptation was a 2 year process of whittling the text of the letter, and of reading Kafka biographies, fiction, short stories and letters. In the end director Cassidy and I wove material from other Kafka works in which Fathers and Sons are prominent into the play. Themes of sons trying to release themselves from the crushing influence of fathers, of artists being misunderstood by society, and of people being abused or ignored by authority, dominate Kafka's writing. It is clear from the letter that Kafka's first experience of these dynamics was at home with his father.

What the play adds to this theatrical set-up is a degree of compassion for the father, a man of commerce and industry saddled with a sensitive son who traces all his insecurites on father. A fascinating result of this play is that it polarizes the audience into two camps, one which sympathizes with Franz and the other which sees the situation through the Father's eyes.

In the Penal Colony

I watch performance in a desperate attempt to feel something. A constant stream of internet information, romantic failures, continued disappointment at the idiocy of elected politicians, a nagging sense of self-doubt and mounting financial concerns have conspired to convince me that an emotional numbness is the only way to exist. A night out at the theatre isn’t a gentle entertainment anymore. It is my last, best hope for feeling.

Opera works well for this. At the very least, it is a reminder of emotions I want to inhabit: huge passions, absurd expression, hopeless desire and tremendous waves of sound. And Philip Glass delivers wave of repetitive energy, working and reworking a small study of notes, building over time towards a final, deliberate moment of revelation and disgust.

When Kafka wrote about a brutal execution machine, he adorned his short story with typically obscure motifs and symbolism. When Philip Glass wrote an opera based on the story, he stripped it back to his usual minimalist intensity, turning Kafka’s meditation on the nature of punishment into an argument between a stern traditionalist and an uncertain liberal observer.

Music Theatre Wales are known for their stripped down approach to opera, and Glass’ clipped intent suits their style: the line from Kafka’s original through the score to Michael McCarthy’s direction is clear and sharp. The two singers move between torture table, ladder and around the voiceless prisoner: the certainty of the warden is slowly undermined by the discomfort of the observer. The subtexts, the passions, the violence itself, are all subsumed beneath Glass’ urgent and mesmeric strings.

For the first hour, the libretto sets up a moral conundrum. Is it still acceptable for punishment to be merely punitive, or must it be redemptive? In the last moments, the warden inevitably finds himself at the mercy of his own ideas, his own machine. As the blood drips down onto his back, the horrible revelation, that is no revelation, is unfolded. For all his talk of the morality of his justice, the warden is wedded to horror, not reform.

I write about performance in a desperate attempt to express something of what I have experienced. Yet, through Glass’ score, McCarthy’s direction and the musicians’ intensity, I am brought back to my own state of numbness. It is as if In the Penal Colony is reflecting my own shock and dislocation, resolving nothing and proving only that horror itself is merely anaesthetising.

On Balance, I am Glad I went Out

I hate being out of my depth. It is pretty clear that I am this evening, even if I am in The Arches. It's the Hebrides Ensemble, one of Scotland's top contemporary classical companies. I am about to start wishing that I had stuck to Lady Gaga.

Play it safe, Vile. The musicianship is obviously superb. Alexander Janiczek, the violinist, is in international demand. And the soprano who is duelling it out with him, Elizabeth Watts won the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize in 2009. They are tussling with Kafka Fragmente, composed by Kurtag. You see, sometimes facts are useful.

I can't start claiming objectivity when it suits me. I don't really know what the Rosenblatt is. I wandered in here, full of confidence. I've managed some Reich, some Glass. I even wrote about the Kronos Quartet. This little Performance Critic has gone one art form too far.

The Fragmente read like a teenage emo diary, but Kurtag's duet for violin and voice brings them to disturbing life. I am getting that cold existential vibe, familiar from Live Art, that peels away the façade of safety and reveals that life is, actually, Hell. Is it really a duet? Sometimes the violin and the soprano are fighting. Then the instrument provides gentle support, almost like a loop.

It's a labyrinth here. I try to retrace my steps.

The first half was charming: artistic director William Conway strolled on and chatted genially about the pieces. He did warn us that the Kurtag was hardcore, but he illustrated the upcoming Sonata with a quick blast on the cello, and seduced us with a version of Schumann's Auf einer Burg. As he said, you could practically see the Knight asleep in his tower. It was elegant.Even Janacek's Kreutzer Sonata was enticing, leaving out the savage murder in the final bars. I was safe. This was entertaining, a bit classier than the previous night - when I watched the Adult Channel Freeviews and tried to ignore my citalapram cravings.

Now I feel like Kurtag has sound-tracked my anguish. There are forty-odd fragments, each one veering in mood, but returning to a desolate howling. Watts ranges from shrieking to elegant phrasing: sometimes the darkness hurts, sometimes it soothes.

When I came back after the interval, they had set up a large wall. Behind this, the singer and violinist paced. One would emerge, then the other. Dramatic lighting, shadows cast, the music - the violin seemed to become two, three instruments, setting up drones, cracking open melodies, rattling, singing, poking, slicing. The voice sparred, jabbed, feinted. Kafka's words, more opaque than usual, were all the more doomy for being in German.

I'd heard a few snatches on the Radio Hour: I was not prepared for this. Dark and deadly, vicious and seeking, the subtle performance touches prevented a descent into melodrama. I am embraced and provoked, swept away and looking out to see if I can find a recognisable reference before...