A Yorkshire playwright
Plays such as Kafka's Dick are not easy to classify, and much of Alan Bennett's work – theatre, screenplays, film texts, ‘novellas' and various other writings – seems very much to reflect the man himself. Enigmatic, shy, highly intelligent (he was a lecturer in history at Magdelen College, Oxford), his output is sometimes cryptic, often warming and, among all that, wickedly funny.

Bennett, who will be 70 in May, is best known these days for his rightly-praised monologues – a form which, since Stanley Holloway, he has made his own. In these parts his collaboration with the late Thora Hird is especially valued – not least his recent piece with the Morecambe Dame's last recorded performance The Last of the Sun on BBC7 on 18 January. You did hear it, didn't you?

Also popular is the award-winning The Madness of George III, a piece which I, unusually, did not enjoy when I saw it in Bradford. His earlier works, which extend back over forty years, tend to be neglected. Another inexplicable and inexcusable luvvy fashionable fad, I fear.

Kafka's Dick
This play, which can be grouped with The Insurance Man, a screenplay which also features the Czech writer, is markedly different from Madness and the other plays. Director Ian Hastings – never one for totally ‘safe' diet of drama – has courageously chosen to revive Kafka's Dick, which was premiered in 1986 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, with Andrew ‘Manuel' Sachs and Geoffrey ‘Butterflies' Palmer in the original cast.

Why a metaphysical Czech writer's Dick, you may wonder. Well, the writer is said to have had concerns about his virile endowments, along with other insecurities. Kafka, unlike most creative artists, wanted his work burned after his death. And why set it in contemporary suburban Leeds? This is a lifestyle the playwright has known intimately over many years, and has described and often decried in much of his output.

Along with the issue about whether Kafka's friend had been right not to destroy the author's work, the juxtaposition of these and many other themes gives rise to some wonderful comedy and fast-moving, engaging action which lurches from the comfortably domestic to the surreal and existential.

Some have said that these strands, with the domestic, personal, penile and metaphysical arguments, sexual frustration and ambiguity, are accurate reflections of Bennett's own personality, or personalities. Be all that as it may, I found Bennett a charming urbane and witty co-traveller and brother Leeds Loiner when I met him on that city's station in 1997. Shy, but not particularly to this stranger, and underneath that placid exterior there is clearly a complex and fascinating personality. I think anyone can only ever know him partially.

There is also a sharp subversive streak in his works and in the man, too. Look closely at his earlier work as part of an Oxbridge generation which bred groundbreakers such as Peter Cook and Monty Python. Look at the sinister, seedy and sordid aspects of the monologues. Recall that in 1999 he declined an honorary DLitt degree from his alma mater at Oxford, because Rupert Murdoch had endowed a Chair of Language and Communication there, a move which he, prophetically, likened to a "Saddam Hussein chair of peace studies'.

Space precludes further discussion on the other aspects of the play, or the man. In fact I am not sure I have fully picked up on all the subtexts and themes myself, not being a great fan of Kafka and having only read a couple of his stories. Suffice it to say that for the average theatre-goer, there is enough in this well-wrought play to entertain and bemuse with the pacy action and the witty dialogue.

A worthy and faithful rendering
Hastings, his cast and his team have given us a worthy and faithful rendering of the text, well performed with intelligent and stylish staging, and without going over the top. There is often a temptation to play such pieces as farce (sorry – farce is out of fashion here these days!), and that approach would not be appropriate here.

Hastings sensibly avoided pseudo-Czech or German accents for the young and hypochondriac Joseph Kafka, Max Brod (his friend, almost exact contemporary, literary executor and agent), and Kafka's father. Indeed the homely, hard-headed businessman of Kafka senior resonated well with a Yorkshire accent. There are tradespeople just like him in the West Riding today.

The repressive angst of lower middle-class folk (another Bennett favourite field of exploration) was well depicted visually and audibly. Kafka's pains and neuroses, nicely counterpointed against Brod's more worldly Weltanschauung, were convincingly portrayed by Justin Shevlin and Andonis Anthony respectively. Staging, effects and sound were also well managed, particularly in the impishly divine dénouement.

I'm not telling you what happens at the end – you must go and see it for yourself. If you have enjoyed Bennett on the small (or large) screen, this will give you greater insight into one of our finest contemporary (and Northern) writers. It is well worth the while.

Copyright © 9 February 2004 Michael Nunn