Visually, aurally and emotionally, Metamorphosis, now on at the Hammersmith Lyric, is utterly gripping from beginning to end.

Blending the comic and the horrifying effortlessly, the play tells the well-known story, from Kafka's novel of the same name, of the Samsas family. Their ordered world is turned upside-down when Gregror, the son, undergoes a sudden and terrible physical transformation.

This transformation is expressed to the audience through the breath-taking physicality of Gisli Orn Gardesson playing Gregor, who climbs, creeps and scuttles his way around the startlingly original set.

The audience follows the efforts of the family- father, mother and daughter - to cope with this nightmare, and watches their sense of duty do battle with their repulsion of their son and brother. "It is a theme the world witnesses over and over again", Gisli Orn Gardensson, who also co-directed the play, has commented, "when people all of a sudden feel that someone next to them has changed and is no longer a member of the unity."

This does not however prevent the play from being at times brilliantly funny as the family makes every effort to uphold the appearance of normality. At times we are almost in the realm of sit-com, until we are reminded of the family's dark secret, hiding in the shadows upstairs.

The blend of the trivial and the fantastical in this play gives the whole production the surreal and often frightening atmosphere of a technicolour dream, one which will remain with you long after the curtain falls.

Kate Dunn