Lester and director-designer Dominique Serrand, cofounder of Jeune Lune, have distilled Kafka's unfinished first novel, ''Amerika," about a young man who comes to America after he was banished by his parents for having an affair with the maid. They've distilled it about as well as one could imagine, and the actors from both companies are a hoot to watch.
But despite the fine acting and Serrand's grab bag of visual treats, there is still the fact that Kafka is not that dramatic. Kafkaesque is one thing. ''Waiting for Godot" is unimaginable without Kafka's having first faced the void. Pinter's more political take on individuals who are crushed by forces outside their control also needed Kafka to blaze the trail.
And what is Martin McDonagh's current Broadway play ''The Pillowman" if not a direct descendant of ''The Trial"?
But Kafka wasn't writing for the stage. His characters have no significant arc. There is the degradation of the central figure, whose helplessness and victimization is relentless. It's Dickens, whom Kafka loved, without the uplift, Dostoevsky without any hope of salvation.
Kafka's work is leavened with humor, and Lester's adaptation has plenty of that. Steven Epp of Jeune Lune (he played the title role in ''The Miser") and Will LeBow of the ART go at their assortment of characters as if they're in some comedy-slam contest. (I'd rule for LeBow on the basis of his Moe Howard getup late in the game.) The other three ART men -- Remo Airaldi, Thomas Derrah, and Jeremy Geidt -- add their usual flourishes, though the spotlight throughout is on Nathan Keepers as Karl Rossmann, the 16-year-old protagonist.
Karl's is a picaresque journey through the wilds of early 20th-century America and the immigrant experience. Kafka had never set foot in America, and the land he describes has San Francisco on the East Coast and a bridge that connects Boston and New York. You could say that geography wasn't his strong suit, but Kafka was not trying to be literal.
