08/09/2025
✨ A powerful review from Marina Kovalyov on Kafka for Beginners ✨
What an honor to see Julian Henry Lowenfeld’s latest work described with such insight and passion. Marina captures the heart of what we’re bringing to the Fringe — a timely, poetic, and profoundly human story about truth, courage, and resistance.
Full review by Marina Kovalyov:
59E59 Theaters is not merely a performance venue in the heart of Manhattan. It is a cultural microcosm, a stage that doubles as a laboratory of ideas, where every moment feels like a dialogue with the world—urgent, alive, and profoundly of our time.
More than just an address, 59E59 is a boiling point of ideas, emotions, and theatrical revelations. It is a place where living theater is born—free from formulas, untouched by predictability.
No wonder then, that its marquee now bears the name of Julian Henry Lowenfeld—poet, playwright, and acclaimed translator of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova, Mandelstam… It is in this sanctuary of intellectual freedom that his latest work, Kafka for Beginners, found its true voice.
In conversation with me, Julian shared that the play was written in just two days, in the wake of Alexei Navalny’s death. It is a tribute to Navalny, to Solzhenitsyn, to all those who have dared to speak truth to power—and to the many great poets silenced by tyranny. Naturally, the performance includes verses by Pushkin, Mandelstam, and Akhmatova, in Lowenfeld’s own translations, woven together with his original poetry.
At the premiere, I discovered a new side of Julian—not only a brilliant translator and poet, but a playwright of rare clarity: intelligent without pretension, profound without theatrics, funny without resorting to cheap cynicism.
Kafka for Beginners, born on a New York stage, was swiftly invited to the international arena—Edinburgh Fringe, the world’s great Free Theater festival, whose founding credo in 1947 still resonates: “The Truth We Seek.”
What could be more symbolic than Lowenfeld stepping onto that very stage—with a play about freedom?
The action unfolds in a painfully familiar allegory—the Empire of Ozymandia, where “2 + 2 = 5” is not a mistake, but a state religion, enshrined in law and hymn.
Our protagonist is a Poet.
He does not sing the anthems.
He does not inform.
He refuses to recite the dogmas of state-sanctioned truth.
And so—he is arrested.
His laptop is hacked.
His thoughts exposed.
His silence declared a threat to the regime.
Thus begins his trial under the Ministry of Redemption—an agency tasked with purging the soul of its last trace of free will.
In this new Theater of the Absurd, the Poet faces a devastating choice: betray himself—or vanish.
But this is no simple dystopia. It’s a deep excavation of the soul at its breaking point. Where does fear end and resistance begin? How much truth can a heart withstand? At what moment does silence become action?
Lowenfeld blends genres into something altogether new:
A play, where two extraordinary actors—Jonas Kobberdal as the Poet and Kane Parker as Agent 9—live through their destinies in real time, with the audience not as observers but as co-participants.
A theater of poetic declamation, where, inside the Poet’s cell and beyond the white square of the screen, the soaring voices of world poetry echo through time.
A multimedia theater, where metaphor is born before our eyes.
Yes, Kafka and Orwell are summoned—but not mimicked. Lowenfeld enters into direct dialogue with them, from the world of today.
Kafka for Beginners is not a play of quotations.
It is a theater of witness, where we are not mere spectators, but players on a very real stage—separated from the action only by a thin red ribbon.
Yes, it’s often funny, and at times painfully sharp—but it is essential for anyone still trying to discern truth amid the noise of post-truth.
For everyone asking: What would I do?
The show lasts just an hour. Only two actors appear onstage—Kobberdal and Parker—yet the voices behind the wall, beyond the white square, bring with them a startling emotional magnitude:
• The Supervisor: voice of Julian himself
• The luminous Anna Lowenfeld,
• The iconic Cantor Nancy Dubin,
• The Poet’s Wife, sung by Arina Ayzen, both soloist and choral director
• Ty Lane, the voice of the Radio Announcer
• Jake Howard, as the Torture Victim
• Maxim Shatalkin, pianist
• The Chorus: Arina Ayzen, Janet Ayzen, Paul Royce, Kreshnik, Zhabzhaky, Nancy Dubin
So many voices. So much pain, resistance, defiance.
At times it feels as if those behind the white wall are real people—about to step onto the stage and into our lives. And then you realize:
This play isn’t about Kafka. And it’s not for beginners.
It’s about each of us.
Standing on the edge.
Looking inward.
Living in a world where “2 + 2” still equals “4”—if you dare remain human.
Creative Team of KAFKA FOR BEGGINERS
Author And Composer Julian Henry Lowenfeld
Director Anonymous
Music Director Maxim Shatalkin
Producer Julian Henry Lowenfeld
Assistant Director Tiaga Shanti
Associate Producer Nadine Okselie
Sound Designer Denis Zabiyaka
Sound Recording Director Iggy Kissel
Costume Designer Vas Sloutchevsky
Stage Manager Jackie Leibowitz
Graphic Designer Vas Sloutchevsky
Lighting Designer Stanislav Terentyev
🎭 Kafka for Beginners
📍 Hill Street Theatre, 19 Hill St, Edinburgh
🕒 3 PM daily (except Mondays)
🎟 https://kafkaforbeginners.com/
