“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.” Thus begins The Metamorphosis – one of Franz Kafka’s most famous and most frequently adapted stories. In The Metamorphosis directed by Michał Kmiecik – a theatre-maker whose work often draws on grotesque and absurdity – Gregor Samsa is a modern-day corporate employee. One of the ilk David Graeber described in his book Bullshit Jobs. Perhaps the Gregor of the Wrocław production could easily pass somewhere in the background of the now-iconic series Severance. Samsa’s unexpected transformation triggers a chain of events that expose his entanglement into the capitalist machinery of labour and value production, as well as the pressures imposed by his own family. Kafka’s text here becomes a pretext for reflection on work in late capitalism and the possibility of resistance against the mechanisms that lay claim to human lives.

Kmiecik and dramaturg Ida Ślęzak focus on bringing out the horror and absurdity inherent in the story. They loop Kafka’s phrases and make successive characters utter them. The performance unfolds against an impressive, multi-part set designed by Szymon Szewczyk. Both the flat and the office spaces are disturbingly sterile and impersonal. The human is meant to disappear here: blend into the designer interior in the first case, and in the other – become a perfectly functioning cog in the corporate machine. The creators also make use of live video and projections (responsible for the video are Agnieszka Piesiewicz and Filip Wierzbicki, with live cameras operated by Marek Hajduk) as well as surreal sound effects (music and sound design by Wojciech Kucharczyk) to evoke the oppressiveness of the world the protagonist inhabits.

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Contains a scene of a sexual nature.

The National Stary Theatre has announced that due to a breakdown, the lift for wheelchair users is out of service.

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Photo by Filip Wierzbicki