The Stage

Joseph K

Published Friday 19 November 2010 at 11:00 by Jason Best

Comedian and writer Tom Basden has re-imagined Kafka’s nightmarish fable The Trial for the 21st century with a darkly comic play that brings out the original work’s mordant humour and semi-surreal oddness. Capably performed by the four-strong cast, his version also creates an all too recognisable depiction of the maddening frustrations of modern life.

Tom Basden and Tim Key in Joseph K at the Gate Theatre Photo: Tristram Kenton

Initially, Pip Carter’s thrusting young banker Joseph K exudes arrogant self-assurance - no mean feat when he’s been caught at home wearing nothing but a towel by two strangers. Expecting his sushi delivery, Joseph is nonplussed when the men inform him he is under arrest. It has to be a wind-up, right?

Sadly, the men’s appearance isn’t a joke or a site-specific, interactive-type thing. And although Joseph is allowed to go on with his life, his self-possession rapidly unravels as he discovers he is trapped in a labyrinthine bureaucratic process.

Cleverly, Basden besets his protagonist with mishaps that will be all too familiar to the audience. Joseph’s mobile phone stops working, his Boots card points disappear and the staff at the customer complaints centre prove singularly unhelpful. At times, it seems that a confederacy of dunces rather than a totalitarian conspiracy is out to get him.

Lyndsey Turner’s staging is much less experimental than the Gate’s classic-adaptation collaborations with Headlong Theatre and gets big laughs from Joseph’s predicament thanks to skilful comic playing from the cast (which includes Basden himself). Yet over-fussy scene changes means that the production loses momentum when it should be gathering pace and menace.