In 1917, two short stories by Franz Kafka were published in the German monthly magazine Der Jude, (literally ‘The Jew’). One of these stories was ‘A Report to an Academy’, narrated by an ape who has taken on a human life.
The ape, nicknamed ‘Red Peter’ by his captors, was shot and captured from Africa, in what is now Ghana. He was kept in a tight cage, too short to stand but too narrow to sit, and sailors poked at him with sticks.
Desperate for a way out, he learned to mimic human mannerisms. “I am deliberately not saying freedom,” he says, to avoid misunderstanding: “Only a way out—to the right or left or anywhere at all.”
The stage adaptation of Report to an Academy, adapted and directed by Gabriele Jakobi, is a one-act, one-man show with persistent intensity. From the moment Robert McNamara limps across the stage, his cane smacking loudly on the ground, he is anguished and triumphant in equal measure.
There is a deliberate coarseness to his manner that borders on the alien: he licks his lips and sticks his tongue out, he bares his teeth, he spits on the ground. At one point he feigns exposing himself.
Without prosthetics or makeup, except to produce the large red scar which prompted the nickname ‘Red Peter’, Robert McNamara is nevertheless wholly believable as the ape.
There are several short music-hall interludes, where he continues his story while dancing with a cap and cane. These are a welcome relief from the intensity of the rest of the monologue. The jaunty dancing, contrasted with the grimly set face and bleak narrative, is disorienting.
Almost literally a performing monkey, ‘Red Peter’ spits resentment at the life he is living, but he regrets nothing. This was the only way out of the cage. It was never going to be freedom.
The production is fastidiously faithful to Kafka’s original story. It doesn’t layer on interpretations about animal cruelty or global warming. Nor does it take a stance on the suggestion of one Kafka biographer: that the story is a satire of the assimilation of Jewish people into Western society.
The stage show of Report to an Academy is a clear window, through which we can see Kafka’s short story as he wrote it. It is a capable actor performing what Kafka has written as a straightforward monologue, and done very well.
Report to an Academy is at The Old Red Lion Theatre until 30th July 2022.
