KEY POINTS:
The Lower NZI Room of the Aotea Centre is an unexpected location for a grungy and artistic interpretation of Kafka's paranoid novel The Trial.
But its corporate blandness is successfully obliterated by an inventive Kiwi theatre company which takes the audience on an unsettling journey through a surreal landscape of power gone mad.
With luminaries such as Harold Pinter and Orson Welles adapting The Trial, Winning Productions shows admirable guts in creating its own interpretation of the Kafka classic, which plays until November 29.
Writer Dean Parker cites an Israeli trial where the Palestinian defendant's crime couldn't even be shared with his lawyer as just one modern example of the play's relevance.
And this production gives equal weight to the sexual politics of the novel which he says other interpreters have ignored.
It's difficult to judge his version, as this production seems overwhelmed by the music, set design and video effects which in many ways are more effective at bringing to life Kafka's themes than the performances themselves.
Karlos Drinkwater plays Joseph K as a supremely patient everyman who seems merely baffled by what he sees rather than intimately and viscerally affected by the systematic destruction of his life by a capricious and all-powerful bureaucracy.
While it makes him an ally with the audience, especially as we are led on a merry dance around the venue, this approach robs the play of any dramatic momentum and makes his eventual demise an empty death. The rest of the company (Isaac Smith, Warwick Donald, Gerard Crewdson and Jeff Henderson) take on multiple roles and in many instances also play live music to accompany and comment on the action. Although they are accomplished musicians, many of the performances are muted and muddled with little differentiation between the different characters.
Cameron Rhodes is the one exception and he enlivens all of the scenes he appears in.
Liesha Ward Knox and Jo Smith play the women of the piece and although better at creating differentiation than the men, their females don't stray from the archetype virgin or whores, but then perhaps that was the intention.
Andrew Foster's pared-back design makes good use of everything from temporary wire fencing to hospital equipment and security gadgets. His design is visually interesting, inventive and thoughtful and a highlight of the show.
Musical director Jeff Henderson and video designer Kim Newall are also to be commended for their contribution, but lighting designer Sean Coyle doesn't bring the same level of creative expression or accomplishment to his design.
At more than two hours, Winning Productions' The Trial needs a good edit and an even better dramaturge.
Director Stephen Bain has some exciting moments in the first act and it was refreshing to see a company working within the bounds of physical theatre, but ultimately it doesn't live up to its early promise and feels like a bloodless misfire.
