Top cast for The Trial at STC

Matthew Lutton directs a cast of seven diverse performers including John Gaden, Ewen Leslie and Belinda McClory in Louise Fox’s new adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial.

Matthew Lutton directs a cast of seven diverse performers including John Gaden, Ewen Leslie and Belinda McClory in Louise Fox’s new adaptation of Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial.

The indefinable, elusive and mysterious power of Kafka’s wit, clowning, farce and obsession with the erotic is mined to the full in Sydney Theatre Company’s partnership with Malthouse Melbourne and Perth’s ThinIce. Performances at Sydney’s Wharf 1 commence on September 9.

On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Joseph K (Ewen Leslie) awakes to find himself under arrest. For what, he cannot tell. By whom, he’s unsure.

Permitted to go about his daily business, he soon finds the entire world in which he travels has been infected with a bizarre implication of guilt, and the more he struggles the more he becomes wound up in ludicrous scenarios. An amorous neighbour, a porn-peddling washer-woman and a court-room with all the order of a barnyard seem to tempt him to madness, but throughout it all K maintains the stoic front of a man for whom it will all make sense in the end.

An absurdist provocation on the bleakness of life in a modern world, this enigmatic take of one of the classics of 20th Century literature invites the audience into the heady maze of intrigue and desire.

Matthew Lutton has worked with Sydney Theatre Company as director of 2009’s The Duel, and part 1 of The Mysteries: Genesis. Both John Gaden and Ewen Leslie were members of The STC Actors Company with memorable performances in The War of the Roses and The Serpent’s Teeth. Belinda McClory’s most recent performances for the Company were in Martin Crimp’s The City and Ross Mueller’s Concussion.

The full cast is John Gaden, Peter Houghton, Ewen Leslie, Rita Kalnejais, Belinda McClory, Hamish Michael and Igor Sas.

Bookings: (02) 9250 1777.