Kafka's Dick, July 28, 1996

Kafka's Dick by Alan Bennett

At Athenauem II until August, 1996

 Reviewed by Kate Herbert around July 27, 1996

Alan Bennett's play, Kafka's Dick, is not a euphemism. It really refers to Czech novelist Franz Kafka's penis. An odd topic for a play? Evidently Kafka's member was tiny and for a man with an almost psychotically distorted body image, this was disastrous.

Although the Kafka of this production (Mark Butler) is more rigidly dignified than charming, Bennett's Kafka is a charming, neurotic artist whom women find irresistible. Do we have no taste? He hates his name (Kaka plus "F"), fusses about food, lives with his parents, obsesses over detail and demands attention for his depressive behaviour.

Is it any wonder that he has become the darling of the angst-ridden moderns. His eerie, desolate images of Joseph K. arrested for no reason (The Trial) and Gregor Samsa transforming into a dung beetle (Metamorphosis) parallel our obsessions with a meaninglessness and uncontrollable world.

Bennett, who wrote the screenplay for The Madness of King George and tele-series Talking Heads, is a comic writer of great skill although this script has far too much explicatory dialogue.

Kafka and his friend, Max Brod (Peter Rowley), appear to dreary Kafka buff, Sydney (Ian Toyne), and his wife Linda (Meridy Eastman) sixty years after Kafka's death. Sydney is, laughably, writing an article on Kafka for an insurance journal. Like Kafka, he hates his name, works in an insurance office and craves recognition.

Brod admits that not only did he not burn all Kafka's works after his death as directed, but that he published the lot and made a career out of Kafka who is, to say the least, displeased. He prefers wallowing in misery and self-loathing and suffering in ignominious anonymity. Aah, the inverted vanity of the garret artist.

Bennett's style is farce-meeting-psychology. The thematic core of his story is Kafka's relationship with his oppressive father, Hermann (Dennis Moore) and here Kafka's dick becomes relevant. Papa was a rambunctious button-seller who harassed his indulgent, narcissistic and annoying son. Hermann also appears in Sydney's house to attempt to redeem his appalling reputation but realises, on seeing Sydney's old dad ignored, that "a good father is a father you forget. Bad fathers are never forgotten." Great artists are rarely the product of secure, normal and happy families.

The second half is the stronger in this co-operative production. There is greater dynamism and dramatic tension after Hermann arrives which is assisted by a vibrant performance by Dennis Moore. Performances are uneven with a few breathless one-note characters but Bob Hornery's cameo as Sydney's abandoned father is well placed and hilarious and Eastman's Linda is an engaging sketch of a mistreated wife. 

The direction is competent but lacks some inventiveness and comic sensibility which leaves the production reliant on Bennett's glib dialogue and rather arch and contrived narrative.

KATE HERBERT