Broadway Records release Kafka’s Metamorphosis: The Musical! on CD and digitally. Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find that he'd caught the musical theatre bug! Kafka's mystifying and mesmerizing novella comes to hilarious and haunting musical life onstage. Gregor's rude awakening and metamorphosis parallels the journey of our dauntless narrator, Franz Kafka, incorporating some of his other surreal and iconic works, including his infamous 'Letter to His Father.' As Gregor/Franz approach their inevitable conclusions, we explore with poignancy, humour, and music the ridiculous and heartbreaking realities of family and tolerance...

By all accounts this musical should never have existed. The premise was originally a joke. In the CD notes, the show's creator / songwriter / singer, Matt Chiorini states: "A few years ago, I was laughing with some friends about the Musical Adaptations That Should Never Be Made and as soon as I suggested a musical version of The Metamorphosis, I found the idea too ridiculous and wonderful to ignore... And somehow, here we are, and I’m writing liner notes for an album of this show that started as a joke".

While it does have comedic and musical value, I'm not overly convinced that this works so well as a recording. The original stage play unfolded with the use of puppets, shadow-play, black light, ersatz literary scholarship, and a dizzying array of low-tech theatrical conventions. Maybe it would be much more fun to see being performed live than it is simply listening to a lot of exposition and rather silly songs... Maybe.

For me, one listen was quite sufficient, thank you. A novel, rather bizarre, reworking of a classic.

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Daisy May