Scena Theatre's Metamorphosis Brings Kafka's Nightmare to Vivid, Physical Life at DC Arts Center
Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to discover he has become a giant insect, and nothing in the Samsa household will ever be the same. Scena Theatre has brought Franz Kafka's famous tale to the intimate DC Arts Center in Adams Morgan with Metamorphosis, the stage version Steven Berkoff fashioned from the 1915 novella, directed by Robert McNamara. Reviewers have come away calling it excellent and thrilling, and audiences have until Nov 22, 2026 to catch it.
The story is as unsettling as ever. Gregor is an overworked traveling salesman whose paycheck supports his parents and sister, and once that money stops, their shock hardens into shame and then rejection. Alienation and a broken family, far more than horror, turn out to be the real subject. Part of what makes this telling so absorbing is the way it keeps shifting the audience's sympathies, tugging the heart toward Gregor in one moment and toward his bewildered family in the next. It all unfolds in about an hour and a half with no intermission.
What has critics most excited is how the production tells that story. Lee Ordeman plays Gregor with no bug suit and no props, twisting his own body into the creature. With darkly hollowed eyes, nimble contortions and squeals of distress, he is truly unnerving, yet in dreamlike flashbacks to happier days the decent, likable young man shines through. The four Samsas open the evening lined up one behind another, arms splayed and fingers twitching, so that together they become a single insect. McNamara's staging leans on heightened gesture, mime and jarring sound, and the performers occasionally turn to speak straight to the house. Frozen poses and tableaux punctuate the action, and the ensemble's timing is exact. Extreme emotions and a father's grip on his household drive this story, and the bold, stylized approach brings both into sharp focus. For such a dark tale, it is told with obvious relish.
The cast has earned praise across the board. Joe Palka is frightening as the domineering father, a man whose pride has withered since he stopped working, and the scenes in which he turns on his son are among the most chilling of the night. Nancy Flores, in her first appearance with Scena, gives the mother wonderfully old-fashioned airs and makes her visibly torn between love for her child and her husband's harsh dismissal of him. Katherine DuBois fills Greta with bubbly charm as the devoted sister, which makes the character's eventual hardening all the more disturbing. Kim Curtis is deliciously overbearing as Gregor's nosy boss, then returns alongside David Johnson as a pair of prospective lodgers in a comic turn that supplies welcome laughs.
The design is spare and striking. John Traub's set is a platform topped with a cage of bars that suggests a jungle gym, and it becomes the bedroom whose walls Gregor can literally climb. Marianne Meadows bathes the stage in otherworldly blues, greens and magentas while white spots pick out the actors' faces. Brandon Cook's soundscape of eerie music, ticking clocks, creaking doors, organ, chimes and drums is timed to the second with the action and often drives a scene forward. Alisa Mandel's black-and-white period costumes give the family's gestures the look of a silent film.
For anyone who loves bold, actor-driven theatre, or who has only met Gregor Samsa on the page, this is a rare chance to see a modern classic done with real precision and nerve. Performances are Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 PM and Sundays at 2:30 PM through Nov 22, 2026 at DC Arts Center, 2438 18th St NW in Washington, DC.