✭✭✭✭✩

by Mark Cassidy & Alon Nashman,

directed by Mark Cassidy

Theaturtle/Threshold Theatre, Al Green Theatre,

Miles Nadal JCC, Toronto

March 7-18, 2006

Many of us at some time have wanted to tell our parents exactly what we think of them and how they have ruined our lives.  Franz Kafka, author of The Trial, did this in 1919 when he wrote his “Letter to His Father.”  He didn’t send it, but it remains a document central not only to understanding Kafka, but, because of his keen insight, to understanding the alienation that can exist between any two people or between mankind and creator.

 

Mark Cassidy and Alon Nashman have adapted the “Letter” as an hour-long play.  As Kafka, Nashman is superb at conveying the exact tone of the letter.  This is not a rant or an emotional plea but an attempt to analyze as rationally as possible how a father’s very nature has led a son to feel worthless and to expect failure in all areas of life.  As Kafka’s father Nashman justly shows us boor and petty tyrant but not a monster.

 

Paradoxically, Kafka reconstructs with words, as with the set of wire boxes and grills, the very prison he is trying to escape.  While Darren Copeland’s sound design is overemphatic, Andrea Lundy’s highly inventive lighting reflects Kafka’s claustrophobic world where shadows threaten any glint of freedom.              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-03-16.

Photo: Alon Nashman as Franz Kafka.