Apparatus brings black comedy to Kafka's tale of torture – Brighton Fringe, review

On paper, Apparatus seems unlikely to be the cheeriest of hours to spend at the Brighton Fringe, and within minutes of it starting, the clanking of chains down the central aisle of the theatre signifying the arrival of a prisoner confirms this.

This is Welsh director Ross Dinwiddy’s reimagining of Franz Kafka’s typically grim short story In the Penal Colony. The play is set almost entirely in one room, essentially a death chamber, in which an unwitting Traveller comes to witness an execution using a torture device that inscribes the sentence of the Condemned on his skin before he dies, carried out by a deranged Officer assisted by a passive guard.

A notable attraction of the production is Emily Carding, whose previous acclaimed one-woman version of Richard III would suggest her, quite correctly, to be more than capable of carrying the production on her own. Indeed her performance as the Officer is captivating; her devotion both to the "apparatus" itself and her previous superior, the Old Commandant, as convincing as it is unnerving.

The audience’s horror unfolds simultaneously to that of the Traveller, firstly on discovering that the Condemned has received nothing in the way of a fair trial, and then that he has no idea of his fate. The moment when he realises what is happening – when he is stripped naked, strapped face-down onto the bed, and proceeds to vomit – is deeply disturbing. He reaches out in a silent plea for help to the stunned Traveller, before doing the same to the audience – one of many uncomfortable moments in which we find ourselves implicated in these acts of cruelty.