The Hunger Artist ****

A man is in a cage, fasting. He is The Hunger Artist (Jonathan Sidgwick) and his impresario is selling tickets across Europe for people eager to observe the spectacle. His impresario will insist that his fast does not extend beyond 40 days; perhaps alluding to Jesus in the wilderness, or on the grounds of health and safety, but more likely because novelty fades and fresh tickets must be sold.

As the production unfolds, we learn about the unnamed man, who regards this unusual and frankly dangerous activity as his profession. He is perfectionist and obsessive by nature, but is deeply passionate about and committed to his art form.

The physical torment is obvious. But the physical deprivation gives rise to mental disintegration and is surely an unreliable narrator. Hunger corrodes the mind as well as the body.

The public grow weary of his art form eventually and he joins a travelling circus, but as little more than a sideshow curiosity. The public’s appetite for this kind of display has waned, however, and his place in the cage is taken by a healthy panther, its vibrancy in contrast to his frailty. The artist dies shortly afterwards.

Franz Kafka is one of the most influential writers of the 20^th century. This short story was his last and published posthumously. It contains some recurring themes of Kafka’s work, fusing the fantastic with realism and placing isolated protagonists into surreal or unusual situations.

Sidgwick delivers an intense and impressive performance. The mental strain he is under punctuates his speech, his facial expressions displaying his anguish and his body creaks under the strain of the self-induced endurance. The artist’s perspective on the world unfolds in slices – his irritation at the accusation of cheating, his frustration with the impresario (the artist would like to push the endurance boundaries further), his contempt for some of the people who attend to gawp at him as if he were sub-human. We witness his hubris, his uncertainty, his ambition and his melancholy – the fractured components of his humanity.

Kafka threads various themes into this piece. One is the relationship between art and society. The Hunger Artist appears incapable of conformity, raising the question of whether alienation is not merely the consequence of artistic devotion, but an essential part of it. As public interest declines, his marginalisation becomes complete.

Another is perfectionism – his clearly misguided position that “it’s the wrong type of food”. This leans into an idea - not universally shared - that art is conceptually deception rooted in inauthenticity; but yet it remains art. Here, Kafka is perhaps discussing the relationship between art and authenticity and we see that the artist ruefully notes the vitality, authenticity, and indeed popularity, of the panther.

The still unnamed man is, of course, hungry – for the recognition and acclaim that will continue to elude him.