Kathryn Hunter in Kafka’s Monkey. Photo: Keith Pattison
Kafka’s Monkey is original, creative and one of the great theater experiences. It brings together a great author, a talented playwright, and a brilliant actor so, after the fact, one might say “how could it be otherwise.” Still it’s totally unexpected. After all, a play consisting of an invited speech delivered by an African chimpanzee to an august Academy is … well, unlooked for.
Did Dostoevsky read this over before he published it?
It’s hard to take on Dostoyevsky but this really is somewhat sophomoric. Bruce Myers was too appealing and spry for the aged Grand Inquisitor with terrifying power over life, death and torture — and that’s the whole piece, a dramatic monolog. Christ just sits and listens with his back to the audience until the end when he gets up, gives the Grand Inquisitor a kiss (love? betrayal?) and walks off, released from the Inquisitor’s threat to burn him at the stake, presumably because we all know that never happened. The whole does not add up to a “great argument” as people like to say, and as was repeated often at a recent roundtable.
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