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THEATER REVIEW
Crime, Law and Desire: 'The Trial' as Film Noir
André Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault's adaptation of Kafka's ''Trial'' is
the first running production by the Phoenix Theater Ensemble, temporarily
housed at Mint Space on West 43rd Street. The Phoenix was formed by five
former members of the Jean Cocteau Repertory who struck out on their own
in August. So there is reason to be nervous: poor Kafka is so often pummeled
beyond recognition by earnest and ideological interpreters, and those types
are disproportionately represented in small, fledging theater companies.
This time, however, Kafka got lucky. The director, Eve Adamson, is a smart reader, avoiding for the most part the tired ''Twilight Zone'' take on Kafka, though there is that eerie synthesizer music and an embarrassing dream sequence. She concentrates instead on a genre that has roots in Kafka: film noir. Seductive redheads, fast-talking guards, lecherous codgers; this is pulp Kafka and, as such, true to the spirit of the original. ''The Trial'' is, after all, a crime novel, albeit one where the crime itself is never mentioned.
The set is a series of movable vertical slats that throw shadows like giant Venetian blinds, and the cast is dressed in camel hair and khaki, casual Friday colors, fitting for those deceptively indulgent bureaucrats. John Lenartz plays Joseph K., the man determined to prove his innocence though unaware of what he's supposed to have done. The stocky Mr. Lenartz couldn't remind anyone of Kafka, but he gives an interesting performance, alternating between obsequiousness and machismo, with particular deference to those wearing skirts.
This is perhaps Ms. Adamson's greatest insight. Kafka's writing is tinged with sadomasochism and voyeurism like the best pulp fiction, and this production is saturated in sex. In desire as well as law, everything is provisional, declarations are nothing but proposals, and the apparent is just as good as, if not better than, the real. This noir reading is at its most effective in a comically creepy scene when Joseph K. visits the garret of the court portraitist, Titorelli, played by a throaty, androgynous Jason Crowl.
Unfortunately, inside every smart interpretation there's a cliché trying to get out, and by the end, it does. The ''Twilight Zone'' version takes over, the synthesizer picks up and Joseph K. goes from being the ironic, self-incriminating figure of the novel to being a banal voice of the innocent. But it was an intriguing interpretation while it lasted, and a promising debut for the Phoenix.
''The Trial'' runs through Jan 9. at Mint Space, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton.