However, I have a confession to make. Earlier this week I bought a book that I doubt I will ever read. May I take this opportunity ot address the jury and assure them that this is a one-off, and I sort-of kind-of already have read it, and it was in self defense Your Honour.
This collection of plays was written by Steven Berkoff, but adapted from Franz Kafka’s classics. My final A-level Theatre Studies performance, way back in the depths of time (ie: 2002), used his version of In The Penal Colony and, if I say so myself, it was fucking awesome.
So, I’m going to file this baby away on my shelves and when I’m having a dinner party in five years time, surrounded by successful people, I’ll tell them all about how my A-Level Theatre Studies group were the best thing to come out of Cheshire since crumbly cheeese. Then I’ll run upstairs (in this fantasy I’m super-fit and healthy - and rich) and read aloud some passages while my ‘help’ prepares the crème brûlée.
Berkoff/Kafka - The Trial - Metamorphosis - In The Penal Colony
Publication date: 1988
Publisher: Amber Lane Press
Price then: £4.95
Price now: £2
Purchased from: Tin Drum Books, Leicester
From the introduction to In The Penal Colony: “A machine so fiendish and diabolical that its blueprints could have been designed in Hell.”
