A short story Metamorphoses it was written in 1912. It was published four years later, being one of the few works by Franz Kafka to appear during his lifetime. His great novels – Trial (1925), Castle (1926) and America (1927) – became known to the general public only some time after the author’s death, thanks to Max Brod, a friend and biographer, who saved them from the destruction Kafka would have wanted.

In the early years of their existence, the communist regimes installed by force and with the threatening help of Soviet tanks in the eastern part of Europe showed no sympathy for writings that did not in any way correspond to the ideological canon of optimism in the slightest, which was part of the recipe of socialist realism. Neither the mixture of expressionism and surrealism that can be seen in most of Kafka’s works, nor the naturalism observed by Jide, a great admirer of the novel, were unlikely to appeal to the brains of that time. America. Only a little later, in the 60s of the last century, when the Marxist Roger Garody published his famous book on realism without limits, a volume that was also translated in Romania and whose appearance was considered an event, Kafka received something much more. condescension. It even seems that at least some of his works would have been republished in Romania even earlier than in Czechoslovakia. Whatever the situation may be in reality, it is more than certain that in 1968, probably the year of maximum openness of Tsausism, the essayist Radu Enescu managed to publish a monograph devoted to the Czech language with a German expression.

Several of Kafka’s works seduced theatergoers. I will give just a few examples that I had the honor to witness. In 2016, the performances of the International Theater Festival in Sibiu showed a wonderful stage transposition of the story Starving artist thanks to the great director Eimuntas Nekroshius, because in the winter of the same year, the adaptation of the novel America, directed by Michal Dökal, to enter the repertoire of the Hungarian State Theater in Cluj-Napoca.

Now it’s the turn transformation (transformation), which we see neatly transformed into a show called I am a bugfor a very short time entered the repertoire of the Theater named after scream from Oradea. I am a bug it was rewritten in the cabaret genre, everything became one whole cabaret noir, quasi-absurd and quasi-Helderodian, Karpati Peter. In its first part, both the play and the performance mainly follow the essence of Kafka’s novel. To his own horror, one morning the tiny clerk Gregor Samsa, on whose salary the whole family lived, turns out to be a little different. AND otherness the character is accented. Gregor refuses dialogue with loved ones, is independent, looks at himself in the mirror in fear, dehumanizes himself, becomes dominated by fear and physiological. And it mostly hides in the dark.

From now on, I notice that there are several types of obscurity in the play directed by Kovach D. Daniel. Installation largely and usefully depends on this. There is darkness in which Gregor hides, there is darkness in which members of his family sometimes plunge, there is also darkness of the audience. The real ones, that is, us, but also those who participate in the play, our possible messengers who participate and comment on everything according to the formula “theatre in the theater”, which will become dominant in the second part of the play, being the one that allows us to resort to the cabaret style , which he imposes on himself more and more decisively from this moment on.

I also note that there is in I am a bug more and more forms of black. Black is the dominant color of the stage space (the decor belongs to Ferenc Sakač), as well as some of the costumes (by Bayko Blanca Alize). Gregor Samsa is dressed in a black suit, a symbol of a proper, typical official, with great attention to nuances, strictly played by the young actor Tetesh Adam. Also in black and with the same cutter appears his father, powerfully played by Dimeni Levente. And finally, the Procurist is also dressed in black, a role in good artistic terms decided Kovacs Levente Jr

But we are talking about a false additional division, set up by the director to emphasize even more the fact that it will be reversed and strongly contradict everything that happens from the moment when Gregor and then others become aware of the deviant structure of the main character.

Respecting the score written by Peter Karpati, the director Kovach D. Daniel not only enhances the surreal dimension of the text, but also relies on the grotesque. The grotesque of Gregor Samsa’s family and friends, whom he looks at like nine from the hall. The room through which both father and mother wander, trying to explain their situation, a role in which Toth Tünde, and the maid Grete (Cecilia Trabalka) and the sensual Ingrid (Tasnadi-Sahi Noemi) play beautifully. such a typical doctor (Szotyori Józséf). For a long time, the hall passes into the possession of Roland (Balog Attila) and the Spectator (Kocish Dyula), who exchange delicious remarks. An opportunity for us to admire the performances and improvisations and vocals of the actor Balog Attila. In fact, the hall merges with the stage, and from this merger, an imaginary space-labyrinth is born, which absorbs both the actors and the audience.

It is true that sometimes the grotesque loses to the simple comic, not always expensive from an artistic point of view. It seems that in some places the director forgot the Horatian saying This is the modus in the puzzle. After the Roland-Spectatorul duet, in my humble opinion, for a long time, the transition to the cabaret register is final. And it’s getting more and more pressing. Gregor Samsa himself will perform a duet with Ingrid at the end of the play, coming on stage. As in operettas or famous American musical films of the interwar period. Read the entire article and leave comments on Contributors.ro