IN the sensitive, sparky hands of director Zoe Seaton and the ever maturing Big Telly Theatre Company, Steven Berkoff's scream of protest against the constraints and conyentions of anuncomprehending society gives up the element of the grotesque which characterised the original, but - in rich compensation - acquires a gentleness, a humanity, which is sometimes almost too terrible to bear.
The lopsided, skewed, half fable, half allegorical world created by Franz Kalka - and then taken up with dangerous - relish by Berkoff - here finds its place in Bill Connor's topsy turvy, blue stained wood set, whose focus inexorably leads to a lonely elevated platform where Gregor seeks solace and concealment after his horrific transformation from man to giant insect has taken hold. Debra Salem's tick tock music is the perfect counter point, each clicking second, each alarm bell signifying the routinised divisions of Gregor's mundane life, leading up to the sudden gruesome break in monotony which occurs on that fateful morning.
Jack Walsh brings all the skills of his international mime training to the role of Gregor, making him less an object oft revulsion than an unsuspecting creature, cut down and condemned to obscurity at the height of his treadmill working life. Around him, Alan McKee as his bewildered father, Liz Keller as his much loved sister Greta and the excellent Fiona Mettam as his devoted mother, strung out on nervous tension - and confusion, work well in ensemble in a piece whose physicality needs to come up only a notch or two to pull off the total illusion.
