Walter Meierjohann, HOME’s artistic director for theatre, revives his production of Kafka’s Monkey, starring Kathryn Hunter, for his second outing at Manchester’s brand new £25m home for theatre, art, and cinema.
Brutally imprisoned and desperate to escape, the ape-man reveals his rise through the ranks of the beasts to become a master of the ‘civilised world’: a walking, talking, spitting, smoking, hard-drinking man of the stage.
A Report to an Academy, the story from which Kafka's Monkey is derived, is reminiscent of the author's Metamorphosis, in which a man transforms himself into a beetle. It is typical Kafka; a mixture of absurdity and pain.
Writer Colin Teevan’s adaptation, first seen at the Young Vic in London in March 2009 and again in 2011, reveals a world in which humans seem ape-like, and apes humane.
It runs from June 17-27.