I found this by chance at the library when I was looking for information on Kafka's novel. The process of adapting a story or literary work into another form -- whether through translation or producing it on stage -- fascinates me, so when I had a moment I picked this up.

As a written piece of work, it can't compare to the original novel. Plays are of course intended to be performed, not read, but some plays are captured better on the page than others. This one doesn't work quite so well in that form. It uses a lot of Kafka's original words, but for me, at least, with his text fresh in my mind, they lose something taken out of the context. Kafka's writing is descriptive and atmospheric, and stylistically fairly simple; his characters don't rise to great heights of eloquence. Which creates a challenge for anyone trying to adapt the text.

What it means is that a lot of the effectiveness depends on the presentation and staging, not on the dialogue, and that's harder (for me at least) to visualize with only the written text as a guide. I do have a sense for some of what is being attempted here: parts I understand and agree with, other parts I'm a bit dubious about. The action of the story is compressed, and at times the order of events is altered. This is logical enough; the dramatic requirements of the stage are different than in a novel. More interesting is the use of space, particularly the mingling of areas we expect to be kept separate, and the tendency of time to alter its normal patterns. Also the way in which the parable about the doorkeeper was worked into the main action of the play. This is very consistent with the themes and structure of Kafka's work -- it's simply less forcibly expressed in his novel.

Most of my reservations are about the interpretation of the meaning of the story. The novel can be read any number of ways. The play -- by necessity -- expresses the authors' ideas about Kafka's novel as much as (or more than) Kafka's own. This can be quite interesting, but sometimes it can also be distracting. At times I found the tension between the voice and vision of the original author and that of the adapters to be rather unsettling, although on the whole I think the play, taken for what it is, was probably well done.