No one understands loss of identity better than the Czech Jewish writer Franz Kafka. In Metamorphosis, it is lost when the body morphs into an insect. In The Trial (1915) it's lost when bank executive Josef K - played here with indignant outrage by Rory Kinnear - is arrested for unspecified crimes.
In Richard Jones's audaciously staged production, the disorientation felt by K as he is denuded of his status is unforgettably evoked by a giant travelator, the kind used at airports to shorten the cruel distance between passenger and baggage reclaim.
Here, the play's props and human traffic trundle into view like the aforementioned baggage on a moving belt. Only sometimes does it stop. So for much of this show's uninterrupted two hours, Kinnear's sweating K has to work against the tide of events that keep Kafka's flawed hero off balance, but also the conveyor-belt which keeps his legs pumping like a rat trapped on a laboratory wheel.
Miriam Buether's design will undoubtedly be up for awards. But the ideas here, including Nick Gill's adaptation which has K speak his thoughts in broken semi-articulate phrases as if he were losing the ability to reason, lose their dramatic grip after an hour or so.
A conveyor-belt is a brilliant metaphor for a life, especially one such as K's, which is running out of time. But, here, it also conveys a kind of monotony, which does little justice to Kafka's gripping novel.
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