K.

No door leads the same place twice in Allen’s 1996 adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, here revisited in a new production for the Hypocrites. Joseph K. (Brennan Buhl) wakes up on his 30th birthday to discover he’s being arrested, only the agents arresting him don’t know what he’s charged with and don’t take him anywhere. The court is a shadowy entity that seems inaccessible to K.; he’s told that hearings are taking place, but his every attempt to learn about his case leads him to self-serving lawyers, suspicious neighbors and opaque bureaucrats, and further away from the truth, if such a thing exists.

K.’s existential crisis is largely played for dark, rich laughs in Allen’s production, which often employs the Neo-Futurist founder’s metatheatrical leanings. K.’s father (Sean Patrick Fawcett) borrows a program from an audience member to prove his identity to his skeptical son. After a tryst with a neighbor (Tien Doman), K. asks if he’ll see her again. “Not as this character,” she replies. Scenic designer Chelsea Warren’s set, festooned with more doors than an episode of Let’s Make a Deal, smartly speaks to K.’s dilemma: Though he’s seemingly presented with any number of options for engagement or escape, none delivers what it promises. A sharp, chameleonic ensemble swirls around the impressive Buhl, whose standard air of off-kilter bemusement gradually hardens with confusion and resentment as K.’s situation becomes ever more impossible.

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