Laura Marsh lauds the Royal Ballet’s new adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, singling out lead Edward Watson’s performance as the gigantic insect:
Watson evokes the nightmarish experience Kafka describes—of a man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect—through the vocabulary of ballet. Here you can see his leg turned out at the hip and his foot arched. But what he is doing with his toes makes the whole posture hideous. They wriggle like a millipede’s legs, as though beyond his control, and Watson looks at them in horror.
Watson has developed a wide range in this idiom. The role was choreographed on him: he makes his acutely articulated muscles look like arthropodic armor, and he has said that he has a tendency to “stretch things” so that they “don’t look right” in classical ballets. Yes, there is disgust and fear, but he also shows compassion toward his family, which is more than they show him. Despite his redeeming qualities, Gregor and his surroundings only get more squalid. Once he starts to get used to the idea of being an insect, the set, designed by Simon Daw, tilts up and backwards, so that he can scurry up the walls. Soon, brown gunge starts to spread over the white walls, the bedclothes, and the dancers.
The Dish 