Dana Watkins as Gregor Samsa. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

                                  by Eugene Paul

Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which Gregor Samsa, who many believe to be a stand- in for Franz Kafka himself, wakes to find he has been turned into a giant cockroach, has intrigued a vast following since he first published his novella in 1915, a hundred years ago. Students, professors, artists in all media, in colleges and universities, from comic books to horror films, have labored over the meaning of his revulsion with his own life and the terror of expressing himself. In her recently discovered play, playwright Lu Hauser, who died in 2011, tried to unknot the puzzle, having researched and researched aspects less known about Kafka, trying to explain why Kafka wrote his grotesque fantasy and how it came into being. Her play, in its fragmentary scenes and elements, is obviously a work in early stages.

L-R: Matt Walker, Paul Battiato, G.W. Reed, Cordis Heard and Sara Barnett.
Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

Although she follows the autobiographical content of Kafka’s life as displayed in the grim passages of Metamorphosis, she has interpolated her own foreshadowings of the Nazi catapult to come toward the annihilation of Jews through two sinister characters, Herr Damstag (Matt Walker) and Herr Ordnung (Paul Battiato) who become lodgers in the Kafka/Samsa apartment, taken in to supply income for the family. This is such an obviously rotten idea we are meant to be appalled.  Why else? Playwright Hauser’s construction of the family leaves out Kafka’s sister, replacing her with the skittishly amiable maid servant Elsie  (Sara Barnett), keeping dour, doltish Herman Samsa (G.W. Reed), Kafka’s father, and grievously cowed Julie Samsa (Cordis Heard), Kafka’s mother, inevitably  browbeaten by her husband, who also berates and castigates his son. Kafka himself (Dana Watkins) as Gregor Samsa in Hauser’s play, at constant odds with his father, (Why?) is continuously belittled and insulted, even though it is Kafka who is the only one keeping them, paying their way on his hardly munificent salary as a traveling salesman.

Yiddish Theater  L-R:  Derrick Peterson, Nikki Ferry and Dana Watkins.
Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

This melding of real lives and imaginary lives goes further. Kafka/Samsa takes up with charming Mme. Trassik (Nikki Ferry) and beguiling Itzhak Lowy (Derrick Peterson), exuberant, destitute, Jewish actors who enthrall him with their freedom, their joie de vivre, and their unabashed hamminess. Yes, Jewish actors are noted hams. And these characters are real people in Kafka’s life.  Playwright Hauser’s proposition is that they inveigle him to write plays, stories for them to perform, to transform their penniless lives – they sell hot potatoes on the street for their living, these hot potato actors – and everything will be coming up roses. Ah, but this is Hauser trying to deal with the real Kafka.

Director Martin Bormann divides his stage into two settings designed by Anna Yates, on one side, the Samsa apartment, on the other, the  Yiddish Theater Café, which actually existed in Prague in 1912. This does not inhibit director Bormann from using other entrances and exits when he needs to move his perfectly competent actors.  And since they, for the most part lack dimension as people although they move well, it does not seem to matter.

Were you to ask what, indeed, is Kafka‘s quest as posited in the title, you’d have a bit of trouble supplying an answer. Dana Watkins as Gregor Samsa who is Franz Kafka comes across as a nice looking dude who does not know what he’s doing nor why, with neither the author nor the director helping. If the play is to put forth the proposition that itinerant Jewish actors were the inspiration for Kafka to write his Metamorphosis, the case has not been made yet.

Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue near 9^th Street. Tickets: $18, $15 seniors and Students. 212-254-1109 or smarttix.com. Thru Mar 15.