Kafka the Musical

Original version

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Jeremy Mortimer

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BBC Radio 4 Extra - Kafka the Musical

David Tennant plays Kafka, trapped in a musical about his life.

One day Franz Kafka finds he’s been cast to play himself in a musical about his own life. Starring David Tennant.

The magnetic performance that won David Tennant "Best Actor" at the inaugural BBC Audio Drama Awards for his part as Franz Kafka. 

Murray Gold's play starts from the suitably Kafkaesque premise that Franz Kafka finds he has to play himself in a musical about his own life. 

The play - or is it the musical? - introduces Kafka and the audience to some of the key characters in his life, Milena Jesenska, Dora Diamant and Felice Bauer.

Franz Kafka ..... David Tennant
Father ..... David Fleeshman
Mother ..... Joanna Monro
Milena ..... Naomi Frederick
Felice ..... Jessica Raine
Dora ..... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Barman / Singer / Doctor ..... Trevor Allan Davies
Newspaper Seller / Man ..... Brian Bowles

Music by Murray Gold.

Director:  Jeremy Mortimer

First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in  April 2011.  


***   Murray Gold's  first radio play Electricity won the Richard Imison award for best new play after its broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in 2001. 

It subsequently transferred to the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2004 and was performed with Christopher Eccleston in the lead role. Other plays include 50 Revolutions performed by the Oxford Stage Company at the Whitehall Theatre, London in 2000 and Resolution at Battersea Arts Centre in 1994, and Little Joe and His Struggle Against the World (Radio 3 2005). 

Murray has been nominated for a BAFTA four times in the category Best Original Television Music, for Vanity Fair (1999), Queer as Folk (2000), Casanova (2006) and Doctor Who (2008). He wrote the theme tune for the Channel 4 series Shameless and scored the period drama The Devil's Whore. More recently Murray Gold scored another David Tennant series, BBC1's Single Father.

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