Wed. Feb. 27  Sun. March 3

     “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” So begins Franz Kafka’s tale of transformation and transfiguration known as "Metamorphosis." It is one of the most well-known and provocative openings in literature and has been analyzed and considered from what would appear to be every possible angle.

From Wednesday Feb. 27 to Sunday March 3 at the Paramount Theatre, however, a new angle will be offered when Vesturport Theatre and Lyric Hammersmith Theatre Production of Kafka’s famed novella comes to ArtsEmerson (www.artsemerson.org). As it brings the talents of Iceland’s Vestuport and England’s Lyric Hammersmith to this Czech legend’s work, this production is already an international mix of ideas and interpretations. Even so, the story remains clear and is in fact made more so by the use of progressive sets and performance pieces that literally allow the main character to scuttle across the ceiling. (Spiderman, without all the spills? -ed.)  As his life is turned upside-down, so too is the audience’s sense of reality. Though the physicality of the performance is strenuous, the company keeps it together and lets the story shine through.

    When asked how he came up with the idea for this new approach, director David Farr explains that, as his family is of German-Jewish descent, he had always wanted to explore the work of his fellow Austro-Hungarian in greater depth.

     “I love Kafka, always have,” Farr says. “I'd always wanted to adapt it.” Though he had worked on a possible production for some time, it was not until he met actor and co-director Gisli Örn Gardarsson of Vesturport that he knew it was time. “Gisli… is a wonderfully physical performer,” Farr observes. “It was clearly the moment.”

     As the story involves such a profound physical change, Farr knew that his production had to involve and feature a physical actor. “It’s a story about transformation,” he explains, “so we wanted the audience to experience that viscerally.” In addition to Gisli and his Icelandic countrymen’s gift of gyration, the entire set moves in ways that many may not have seen before, adding both to the mind-bending provocation of the performance and also too its impressive and often astounding theatricality.

      “We wanted Gregor's room to feel different, gravity-defying and strange,” Farr says, describing the multi-part moving set. “I think we succeeded.”

    When asked to describe the physical setting of the physically and mentally-demanding story, Farr says, “The whole thing should feel a bit like a very compelling dream that makes total sense whilst being deeply disarmingly strange.” And while the set itself takes the audience most of the way, Farr also suggests that the music has a great deal to do with setting the metamorphic mood. “The music is key to that,” he says. “It takes us into the subconscious in some way.”

     In order to set the mood aurally, Farr called upon famed alternative artists Nick Cave and his long-time collaborator Warren Ellis. ("Push the Sky Away," new disc by the fabulously dark Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds out Feb. 19.- ed.) “Warren Ellis wrote a lot of the instrumental stuff and Nick wrote us a song at the end…about the arrival of spring,” Farr says, crediting the pair with hitting just the right notes to put people in the not-just-right mood. “Suffice to say…they nailed it!”

     As the story has been analyzed and turned over for so many years. Farr knew he had a challenge to face in bringing something new to it. Even so, he took on the task and now feels confident that his production has something to say. “We bring a mixture of things,” he explains, citing the show’s “vibrant theatricality” which, he says, is combined with “a real political and emotional center.” With all of these aspects, Farr says that the show appeals to and connects with audiences on multiple levels.

     “It works through the senses and the emotions,” he suggests, “but the piece is deeply politically centered.”Farr goes on to offer that the story, for all its otherworldliness, is really about something very human and understandable.

     “He was writing about his family really,” Farr says, “nothing more, but his imagination was so remarkable he ended up creating a story that seems to predict the horrors of the upcoming 20th century.” As it is so simple and yet so far reaching, Kafka’s tale of estrangement and reapproachment will continue to be turned over and transformed for years to come. In the meantime, we now have this singular new approach to consider that, Farr says, will touch us in multiple ways. “It works on every level, personal and political,” he says. “It's frightening but deeply human.”

Tix: $65-$25. Shows at 7 Wed. 7:30 Thurs, 8 Fri., 2 & 8 Sat., 2 Sun.

- Matt Robinson

 559 Washington St., 617 824-8000    www.ArtsEmerson.org