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After Metamorphosis
Whorls of words whirring and whirled, Ali Mahoney places Kafka’s Metamorphosis at the mercy of his Burroughsian and Lovecraftian spoken word recitation. Between a pornographic attention to the minutiae of flesh transforming into chitinous armour, the squeak and scrawl of Gregor Samsa, as he becomes insect, is no mere imitation of familiar text but growls and purrs with new ferocity, caught up in the dense adjectives, over-written with horrific detail: a satire of corporate lines, in which the human is locked into the hive. Whether underground cavern or neon-light office, this Samsa’s soul is imprisoned. And while Mahoney drives the fractured, fragmented plot along with putrescent poetics, Lewis Sherlock crawls and twitches to the beat of a thousand tiny insectoid feet.
Format: familiar. A dark ambient throb and moaning, techno taunted and twisted into discomforting ambient soundscapes. Stage right sits Mahoney, half-dressed for the office, surrounded by microphones and machinery. Behind him, the sign-artist (herself possessed by the words that send her sprawling across the desk). Stage right: Sherlock, sometimes seated, other times his face slammed into electric lights, or standing and trying to prowl, piling up objects for projection, finding… nothing… searching, each limb attenuated and each gesture choking with meaning.
Intention: take Kafka’s text as inspiration, and discover new possibilities in the terrifying transition of man into insect. Conjure the demoralising office space and articulate how it operates not just to produce but destroy the human. Imagination is placed at the service of anti-creativity, the dreary darkness of capitalist uniformity highlighted by the raw neon light and the overhead projector. Sherlock manipulates meshes and objects onto the screen, trapped and contained, the surreal metaphor is no longer encased in Kafka’s sublime obscurity: it is satirical of now, the immediate message all to explicit and painful. We are the drones.
Change of mood, now reflect on what this is. Is this visual art? Is it spoken word with physical theatre illustration? Is it puppetry, when common objects are put into projection? How does it work? Is it ferocious and angry enough? After Metamorphosis insists on questions, not answers, provokes and persuades, a poetic plethora of possibilities that moves through moods, modes and motivations, simultaneously shocking and cynical, incisive and intriguing.
Gareth K Vile
