When presenting brilliance—as Jack Klaff does writing and performing Kafka—it may be that the subject requires the play and the acting to be equally brilliant. Klaff meets the challenge with hyper-kinetic ease. Not only does he refer in the script to Franz Kafka’s well-repeated quote, “A book should be an axe for the frozen sea within us,” but he applies axe-like strokes by way of his expansive presence.
Entering the Mumbles Design Co. set—which is all black but for sheaves of white paper placed on the spare furniture—Klaff introduces an initial quiet. He repeats the word “Hush” and announces that he’ll be looking into one person’s soul for the ensuing 90 minutes or so.
He goes about his obviously compulsive mission by often impersonating the renowned Kafka. But not only Kafka. Among the many others, his chief contributor is Max Brod, the man thanks to with whom devoted readers are familiar with the Prague-born genius writer and his novels and essays. It was Kafka’s good friend Brod (has anyone ever had a better friend?) who refused to burn the axe-wielded work despite Kafka’s insistence that they must be burned.
It’ll never be known, of course, whether Kafka, who died in 1924 at 41, truly wanted his output to be destroyed or suspected Brod would save the volumes. And hardly incidentally, throughout Klaff’s memento mori, he grabs the piles of papers and tosses them in the air. He watches them fall to the round, where they lay unretrieved, perhaps symbolizing the destruction Kafka concentrated on among his themes. At the same time, the strewn papers may refer to the voluminous output.
In addition to the grieving, brooding Brod, Klaff presents innumerable characters: Kafka’s mother Julia, father Hermann, sister Ottla, romantic partners like sometime fiancée Felice Bauer (with quotes from the 500-plus letters he wrote her), other romantic partners like Milena Jesenská and Dora Diamont, and scientific and literary figures who offer Kafka observations. These include Albert Einstein, Elias Canetti, Albert Camus, David Foster Wallace, Alan Bennett (one of his plays being Kafka’s Dick), and Martin Amis, who speaks the funniest wisecrack—”I never finished a novel by Kafka, but neither did Kafka.”
Klaff includes, as would seem only right, biographical information, mentioning that Kafka was tall, thin and spoke with a voice that got raspier over the years. (The playwright takes time to note that Brod was very much a physical opposite.) He gets around to Kafka’s not especially committed Zionism. Commenting on the man’s love interests, he gets across the notion that Kafka wasn’t the most ideal companion. Writing steadfastly remained his primary motivation. Klaff even alludes to Kafka’s admiration for Gustave Flaubert’s L’education Sentimentale, a sure testament to the writer’s good taste in authors preceding him.
Not surprisingly, Klaff enacts moments from the most famous pieces, just enough moments to establish their power. Playing Gregor Samsa, who in Metamorphosis wakes up an insect, the actor, limbs wobbling, stops to explain that what Kafka had in mind wasn’t any particular insect but an unspecified horror left to the reader’s imagination. As Joseph K. in The Trial, he cowers on the floor. He doesn’t get around to Amerika.
With Kafka, Klaff appears to be making his New York City debut. (He debuted the work at the prestigious Finborough Theatre in London’s fringe.) His lengthy list of credits indicates that in England he might be what’s known as “a jobbing actor,” extremely good at what he does, regularly employable but a professional who hasn’t achieved regular marquee status.
In a three-piece black suit (what else for honoring Kafka?), Klaff is in manner and bearing is what’s often described as “distinguished.” Once he introduces the people he’s quoting, he smoothly affects a variety of accents. In the novel and novella parts he’s chosen to play, he’s dramatically axe-like, capable of striking sudden fear and, yes, awe in spectators.
For some reason (theater economics?), this is shaping up as a season of one-person shows. In the last weeks, there’ve been Jean Smart in Call Me Izzy. John Krasinski in Angry Alan, Nsangou Njikam in A Freeky Introduction, Rob Madge in My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?). Jack Klaff, directed with equivalent insight by Colin Watkeys, is the latest—and a top-notch addition to the impressive list.
Kafka opened June 15, 2025, at 59E59 and runs through June 29. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
