The Latest Breaking News from Franz Kafka

Welcome to this week’s episode of The Standard Theatre Podcast!

Dreams of fame trap and inspire in Jez Butterworth’s female-centred, Blackpool-set new play; Lemn Sissay takes a personal approach to Kafka; and the Sex and the City creator is full of unsurprises

The production fosters a potent sense of unease, but the mood is relentless and unvarying

The Japanese author on the humour of Kurt Vonnegut, the joys of James Joyce and translating Beatrix Potter

For Franz Kafka, it was The Kid. For Stanley Kubrick, it was the trailer to Eyes Wide Shut. But what about Cobain, Presley and Kennedy? Artist Stanley Schtinter talks us through his revelatory new project

G.N. Ranganatha Rao, 81, passed away in Bengaluru on Oct 9. He was a senior journalist, writer and translator. He wrote books on journalism, short stories, novels, satires, criticism, and poetry. He translated works of William Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, O'Henry, and Ramachandra Guha into Kannada.

This staging of Kafka’s story is physically exciting, even tireless, but it hits an early peak of terror then has nowhere to go for two hours

The poet has teamed up with Frantic Assembly to bring the novella, about a man who turns into an insect, to the stage. He explains why this story of family meltdown is all about modern life

Gerald Barry’s deliberately muted new work, Kafka’s Earplugs, failed to make an impact in this venue, while James Ehnes was a deft and impressive soloist in Walton’s violin concerto

There’s a creepy hand causing all manner of devilry in a superb Aussie horror film, and the Afrobeats honcho rocks the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium

Devotees of J.M. Coetzee’s writing will be delighted at the publication of The Pole and Other Stories. What may be surprising to some about this collection is that the stories have all appeared before in some form – but not always in English.