Dynamic theatre company Frantic Assembly have teamed up with poet Lemn Sissay to produce Metamorphosis, a bold new stage adaptation of Franz Kafka’s classic novella that’s already garnering critical acclaim. The project is the company’s first commission since before Covid, but the pressure of creating another take on a familiar tale meant it very nearly didn’t happen at all -  as Artistic Director Scott Graham explains to What’s On...

The Metamorphosis is probably one of Franz Kafka’s best-known novellas - largely due to its unforgettable image of a man transformed into an insect. It is also the Kafka novella which has been adapted for the stage the most times, including a much-lauded rendering by Steven Berkoff in the 1980s.

The visceral quality of the story and topicality of the subject - lead character Gregor Samsa is transformed from human breadwinner into insect burden as a result of losing his job in a world where financial capacity is everything - seem a natural fit for Frantic Assembly, a company known for the physical nature of its work. Even so, co-founder & Artistic Director Scott Graham admits he initially baulked at the idea.

“It was never something I wanted to do, partly because of the baggage that comes with it… I just thought ‘don’t go there’.”

A conversation with Fraser Ayres, best known for playing Clint in the BBC comedy series The Smoking Room, gave Scott a new perspective on the novella, as well as ideas about how to approach it.

“We talked about Fraser’s personal connection to the story, and how he felt, like Gregor, that he faced an element of his heritage being defined by others. He was either too black for one room or too white for another, never really being himself or allowed to define himself.

“So we started to talk about Metamorphosis as being about perception - that you become what people perceive you to be. That totally reinvented the possibilities for me. I wanted to explore what that might mean if perception is what creates the monster. Rather than being an absurd, sudden thing, the change comes about because people’s perception changes.”

After re-reading the novella, Scott decided the story was ripe for contemporary adaptation, not least because the notion of being trapped and crushed by debt has obvious parallels with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

“I’m always loathe to make big political statements, but it was very clear to me that this is a story about what happens when a breadwinner becomes the burden, and what happens to their self-esteem and their value in others’ eyes and within that system.

“Once, they could define themselves as the provider, but now they’re finding themselves unable to do that, whether through illness, mental illness, injury, disability or just bad luck in the current social economic climate. All those things have a huge impact, and it’s that impact we were really keen to explore.”

The ‘we’ in this case isn’t just fellow members of Frantic Assembly: the new adaptation has been co-created with, and ultimately written by, acclaimed poet Lemn Sissay.

Scott admits Lemn was very much a leftfield choice rather than a safe option for the project.

“I very much admired what he was about, so I approached him and said, how do you fancy this: we work together, we work out what it is, we take the potential of what you can bring, the potential of what I can bring, and we create something. That, to me, felt much more exciting than handing over the task to a writer who would then go off and adapt it on their own.

“Luckily, Lemn was up for that, and very excited about what it might be, but I think what excited him and me was that nothing was a given - we had to discover it for ourselves.”

Scott says it helped that they both had strong personal reactions to the source material.

“The key for me was finding a way to release Lemn from the onerous task of adapting the novella that everybody has so many expectations about, and finding a way to liberate him to bring what he does best, which is this absolutely beautiful, poetic lyricism, and to write with a freedom.”

Which is easier said than done, and although the idea of collaborating on the production made it less daunting for both sides, the poet still initially scarpered.

“Lemn, quite brilliantly and very honestly, says the first thing he did was run away! And it’s true - he did! He said yes, and then had a wobble and ran, because of the weight of expectation.”

The poet was lured back by Scott’s willingness to find a middle ground between their relative skillsets and approaches, setting up research and development sessions covering physicality, characters and, eventually, actors.

“Lemn could just sit in a room and watch and absorb the potential, rather than feel any of the responsibility to write. The third session was about inviting Lemn to write and try stuff out with the actors. The process worked beautifully, and I think it always felt safe after that initial wobble, where we all felt the weight of expectation and the size of the task.”

Scott admits their adaptation mixes things up a bit - the titular metamorphosis is no longer the starting point - but ultimately stays faithful to the novella.

“My perception of the novella and its place in our culture is that lots of people know the image of Gregor as an insect and that’s it. I think there’s an awful lot of subtlety and guile about Kafka’s writing, and Gregor’s change isn’t necessarily a sudden thing. We begin there in the novella, but then he talks about a decline - a decline in his ability to maintain a standard of work, a decline in his mental health and his energies.

“That’s someone falling into an emotional breakdown, which becomes a physical breakdown, and I thought that was the place to start. And by not starting where everybody expects you to start, you’re not delivering what everyone expects you to deliver, so you’re escaping already some of the baggage.”

One thing audiences familiar with Frantic Assembly are bound to expect is the company’s revered physical performance and visual presentation skills - and Scott says they won’t be disappointed on that front.

“One of the things this production does is paint absolutely beautiful pictures on the stage, so it’s a visual treat. The role of Gregor in this production [played by Felipe Pacheco] is one of the most physically demanding I’ve ever seen - as it should be. It’s brutal, it’s grotesque, it’s highly dynamic and gymnastic and all of that, but I’m keen to stress that it’s all about perception, and that’s the fine line we’re playing with. He doesn’t necessarily turn up dressed as an insect; it’s about how grotesque someone can become if they’ve lost their status within the family.

“It’s all the more horrific for that, I think, because it unearths a kind of cruelty that we’re all possibly capable of, in our ability to see someone as grotesque and slightly less than human just because they can’t quite meet our demands or expectations.”

And will the show meet audience expectations?

“I hope so! It’s always going to be a project that divides opinions, but we’ve done it by being brave and taking risks - I’m immensely proud of it.”

Metamorphosis shows at Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre from Tuesday 23 to Saturday 27 January

By Steve Adams