Canadian actor Alon Nashman brings the world-famous Jewish writer – and his father – to vivid life in this acclaimed one-man play, as part of JW3’s Kafka Festival
© Cylla von Tiedeman
At age 36 Franz Kafka was still living at home, a petty bureaucrat, a failed artist, a timid Jewish son. Ruling and ruining his life was his overbearing father, Hermann. Kafka wrote a letter to his father in which he reveals deep connections between his life and his fiction. As he confesses, "All my writing was about you". Adapted from this monumental (and undelivered) letter, Kafka and Son is a blistering, often hilarious, dissection of domestic authority, starring Canadian actor Alon Nashman. Kafka and Son has toured Europe and now it returns to the UK as part of JW3’s Kafka Festival, 24 to 25 October. Judi Herman caught up with Alon Nashman when he performed his acclaimed one-man play in The Hague and after the performance he spoke to her for JR OutLoud.
Alon Nashman performs Kafka and Son on Saturday 24 October. 8pm. £10-£15. JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8988. www.jw3.org.uk
Read Alon Nashman on his Kafka - along with writer/director/performer Steven Berkoff and novelist and critic Gabriel Josipovici - in the October 2015 issue of Jewish Renaissance.