Review: Kafka's Monkey

Kafka’s Monkey
Sydney Theatre Company
Until 25 April
Tickets $30-$65
Bookings (02) 9250 1777
Critic’s Rating 9/10


During David Attenborough’s famous broadcast with mountain gorillas in Rwanda he turns to the camera and quietly utters: “There is more meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance with a gorilla than with any other animal I know.”

From the moment Kathryn Hunter enters the vast stage space, in ill-fitting top and tails and with the gait of a monkey to address the "ladies and gentlemen of the academy", you know there will be an exchange rarely experienced in the theatre.

Initially a 1917 short story penned by Czech writer Franz Kafka and adapted for the stage by Colin Teevan - Kafka’s Monkey is an address by a lecturer about her existence as an ape five years previously.

Taken from west Africa and incarcerated in the cramp hull of a ship, she stumbles across the idea of imitating her captors to gain freedom from her cage.

As she analyses her new environment within human society, flashes of confinement return as she feels increasingly isolated. It’s at this moment you start to share that isolation as you look around at your fellow audience members (species) and hear their guffaws, applause and feel their breath.

This production from London’s Young Vic and directed by Walter Meierjohann is a theatrical delight not just for its effect but for the astonishing versatility in the physical and vocal skill of Hunter.

It is a performance at its most adventurous and brings the face of humanity eye to eye with our inner primate.