A great play

Kate and I saw a wonderful play last weekend at the Trap Door theater here in Chicago, "Amerikafka," directed by our friend Kate Hendrickson. Here's the excellent, right-on-the-money review from the Sun Times:

"Kafka's worlds

June 30, 2005

BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic

In 1912, Franz Kafka -- an insurance claims adjuster by day, a visionary modernist writer by night -- had a life-altering experience. He attended a performance by a traveling Yiddish theater troupe that had stopped in Prague, and he became friends with its young Polish-Jewish leader, the effusive and spirited actor-director Itzhak Lowy.

In that same year, Kafka, 29, would begin work on what he called his "American novel" -- a never fully completed book published posthumously as Amerika. A Dickensian tale, it follows the adventures of a 16-year-old boy who is packed off by his parents to the New World to avoid a paternity suit. The boy arrives in New York harbor to find the Statue of Liberty holding a sword rather than a torch, and he eventually ends up joining a traveling circus called the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma.

Kafka, it should be noted, never visited America.

It is out of all this -- and much, much more -- that playwright Ken Prestininzi has woven his alternately fierce and flamboyant fantasia "AmeriKafka," now in its Midwest premiere by Trap Door Theatre. A blend of the dreamy and nightmarish, the spiritual and profane, the heartbreaking and the soul-searching, the transcendent and the vulgar -- with some hilarious X-rated puppetry, too -- it is a theatrical piece that captures both the mystery and tragicomedy of Kafka's real and imaginary worlds.


When we first see the writer (played movingly by Tom Bateman, whose wide-eyed face and skeletal body create a haunting presence) he is literally naked -- a tortured soul, wracked by a bloody cough, by self-doubt and by problems with his father. He also is torn by the three powerful forces on Jewish life in the 20th century -- Zionism, assimilation and genocide. Of course he could not possibly have known about the Holocaust -- he died of tuberculosis in 1924, at the age of 40 -- though later readers would have the eerie sense he knew exactly what was to come. In fact, Kafka's three younger sisters (portrayed here by Betsy Zajko, Emily Litspeich and Tien Doman), as well as Lowy (Jason Powers, who captures the zany spirit of his character to perfection), would perish in the camps.

Watching Kafka's encounter with the wild, emotive Yiddish actors -- so different in spirit from his own repressed, uneasily assimilated self -- you begin to understand how liberating they were for him. And their energy remains as Kafka plunges into his imaginary voyage to America, writing up a storm as he weaves the picaresque story of his buoyant alter ego, Frankie K (played by the goofily elastic and altogether wonderful K.K. Dodds, a stringbean of a girl with a slender, boyish frame and a vaudevillian style irresistible in its plucky naivete).

Along the way we meet the women who both excite and frighten Kafka and Frankie K (they are played by Marzena Bukowska, Holly Thomas, Mary Jo Bolduc and the earthy yet angelic Nicole Cardano). We also get a glimpse of Kafka's friend, the life-loving Max Brod (John Gray), who will ultimately rescue (and publish) his work.

Director Kate Hendrickson has staged Prestininzi's challenging script with ingenuity and style -- with a marvelously simple yet ever-morphing set by Ewelina Dobiesz (expertly lit by Richard Norwood), character-defining costumes by Jana Anderson, a klezmer-infused score by Kevin O'Donnell and an array of stunning puppets by Sarah Bendix.

As is often the case at Trap Door, there is too much screaming and overacting at times. In fact, the show's weakest scene is the one that should be most magical and alluring -- when the Yiddish actors take to the stage. Yes, Yiddish theater could be broad, but it was not shrill; there was great art in it. Yet all is forgiven later, thanks to a scene in which Frankie K is taught an unforgettable lesson about the danger of throwing your past away."

The Chicago Tribune was equally enthusiastic.

If you're in Chicago, go see it!