In the Penal Colony
4/5
Written for South London Press
Palestinian director Amir Naizar Zuabi returns at the Young Vic after the success of I am Yusuf, with Haifa based touring company ShiberHur in a captivating adaptation of Franza Kafka’s short story In The Penal Colony, superbly performed by Makram Khoury, Amer Hlehel and Taher Najib.
On a remote colony, an Executioner is preparing the torture machine for a Prisoner, a local solider. The execution is a gruelling process that takes place over twelve hours, engraving the sentence onto the prisoner’s body. A Visitor arrives from the homeland to report on what could perhaps be the last execution of this machine; a new Commander is in power.
Zuabi has adapted Kafka’s story to a powerful drama by focusing on the conflict of the story, with its political, social and religious undertones. The designer Ashraf Hanna creates a machine onstage that’s not gruesome but symbolic, placed alongside a sea of sunflowers. Although this dissipates the literary tension of the story, it means the performance focuses more on the physical and the allegorical. This, in the context of this adaptation, makes for an engaging and confident performance.
We watch the Prisoner run in circles until sheer exhaustion and enter a machine whose actions turn punishment into scripture; the body becomes a symbol for sin. The discussions around the history and future of the device between the loyal Executioner and the doubtful Visitor reveal and articulate a process of formation of extreme laws and moral groundings.
Zuabi has lined the performance with references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also to the process of transformation from one regime to the other. The ending of the story is changed from the original to focus on the rise and fall of a rule and its wider impact, inherently meaningful not only in regards to the Arab Spring, but also to more universal religious and political conflicts.
In the Penal Colony is a successful adaptation that transforms a highly literary text into a potent and meaningful performance with an acute angle and a powerful discourse.
Tagged: Franz Kafka, South London Press, Young Vic