Metamorphosis @ The Merchant’s Hall

Gregor is a lithium addict. Her life is a little routine to her, to put it mildly, in fact is seems unbearably so as she moves increasingly mechanically, like clockwork, to haunting piano tones, until one day she wakes up and everything is different.

She is old.

Now represented by a puppet, operated by three adept puppeteers – sensitive even to this old doll’s breath. There seems buried in here a reminder that if we want to be satisfied by ourselves in old age we need vigilance in our pursuit of living fully in the now.

In this reimagining of Franz Kafka’s most memorable tale, where a young man wakes up one morning to find himself reborn as an insect, Gregor’s family is represented in black and white on screen. The empathetic sister pleads the rather wooden father to be compassionate to what once was his daughter, who is gifted a box containing all the paraphernalia associated with the dwindling years of an old woman: wool, false teeth, an inhaler and let’s not forget the Werther’s Original. In the most touching scene, the cat Gregor has knitted comes to life and prances around the stage to cheerful choice sounds, masterfully selected. A must for fans of puppetry.