The initial moments of mime, mirror games, and marionette dancing are unfortunate as they give the impression you've stumbled into a stale celebration of the earnest and the whimsical. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's soon clear that director Aclan Bates-Buyukturkoglu has ideas aplenty when it comes to staging this sprawling adaptation (Andre Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault) of Franz Kafka's rumination on authority, obedience, and futility.
Josef K (Christopher Goodman) awakens on his 30th birthday to find himself being arrested at his own breakfast table and spends the rest of the show trying to find out why. Bates-Buyukturkoglu, aided greatly by Robert Howeth's bulky brooding set, has created a particularly malevolent universe in which Josef can wander dazedly. There is a constant susurration of indistinct voices that make an aural wallpaper of paranoia, while the inventive and elegant masks by Wendy Gough essentially triple the size of an already large cast. Faces are constantly popping around corners, and there's not a single conversation that happens without at least five ears pressed to the door. Kemal Günüç's original music is deliciously dark, riffing on the underlying circus theme in a bleakly minor key.
Goodman does a fine job in anchoring the production. He exhibits an affability that holds the audience's attention even while the characters around him become more disturbing. He receives impressive support from the ensemble, particularly John Jeffrey Soroka in two utterly different turns, first as an injured bear of a bailiff and then as the character's opposite, a rapacious lawyer. There are a couple of grotesques—one consumed by priapism and the other by litigation—who are nicely limned by Matthew Godfrey, who knows when to stop adding layers of weirdness. Trader Selkirk creates a marvelously creepy landlady, who is possessed of one of the more skin-crawling smiles seen on local stages. Wil Bowers, who begins as Josef's reflection and goes on to carry the bulk of the circus imagery in his multiple roles, acquits himself nicely. Elizabeth Hillman, Sabra Malkinson, and Emilie Davezac are enjoyable, but the female characters, or at least the ones being played by women, aren't nearly as rich because, presaging Hollywood by many years, the roles are short and they're generally duplicitous whores.
The costumes, and there are a lot of them, show an eye for the understated on the part of Becky Hofmann. John Lant's lights seem the one self-conscious element of the show as they struggle to be dark and strange—but on the night reviewed the cues seems a bit, well, slow. Still, it didn't interfere with the distinctive tone of this production. How often does one leave the theatre humming the mise-en-scène?
"The Trial," presented by and at Write Act Repertory Theatre, 6128 Yucca St., Hollywood. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m. Mar. 19-May 1. $10-15. (323) 860-8894.