Kafka’s “The Castle” was left unfinished and published only after his death. Its hero is K., a man of no particular age or origin who claims to be a land surveyor. The stranger wants a place in the Castle—an impenetrable system of regulations, officials, and accommodation.

The villagers below the Castle are part of that system, and they eye the newcomer, who threatens to unsettle their order, with suspicion. Kafka’s picture of a society rotten to the core now reads like a dark, poetic forecast of the dictatorships of our own time.

Maxim Didenko, who left Russia in 2022, made his debut at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden with this production.