Dearly Deported

Dearly Deported never manages to win the attention of the audience, but proves to be alienating due to its poor script and unconvincing acting

Review by Michael Collins | 15 Aug 2007
Dearly Deported is an ambitious work that attempts to bring Kafka’s The Trial into a more contemporary context, encompassing themes relevant in contemporary society. However, like much of Kafka's original work, Dearly Deported fails to fully immerse the audience in the story.

Joseph K is now Joe K, an arrogant, naïve and ambitious – but ultimately rather banal – banker who wakes up on his birthday to find himself on the wrong side of the law. As his whole world collapses around him Joe turns to various groups for help but finds each complicit with the system that has decided upon his deportation.

It is difficult to empathise with any of the characters; even the tragic hero appears to be more an angst-ridden teenager than a man who is forced into a decision through the destruction of his life by the horrific state bureaucracy. Often there are simply too many people onstage, playing too many different characters to enable any individual performance to flow.

The small audience is also a hindrance, as the play's biting satire of various social groups doesn't generate the comic effect that it might arouse in a larger audience. The humorous elements are, however, often not particularly funny, with the exception of TradeMark, a typically bourgeois pretentious fashionista.

Compacting one of the benchmarks of 20th Century literature into an hour is a tough task. Dearly Deported never manages to win the attention of the audience, but proves to be alienating drama to its poor script and unconvincing acting. Whilst the musical score, and occasionally the performance capture the intended mood, it is hampered by an inability to feel any sort of empathy for anyone on the stage.