Franz Kafka ordered his friend Max Brod to burn his incomplete novel The Trial after his death in 1924; Brod edited and published it instead. Although written more than 80 years ago, the book was so prescient in its portrayal of a idly malevolent bureaucracy that it feels timeless. Christopher Gallu has written a new adaptation for Catalyst Theatre Company (where he is Producing Artistic Director), and here he steps into some mammoth shoes: Orson Welles wrote and directed a film version in the early 1960s, and Harold Pinter again adapted the book for the screen three decades later. (There have been other, unofficial film versions. Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, for example, seems at least as indebted to The Trial as it does to Orwell’s 1984 — which, come to think of it, Gallu also adapted and staged at Catalyst a few years back.)

Directing from his own script here, Gallu has found some clever, and indeed, cinematic ways of making Kafka’s paranoid non-delusion feel fresh — though not of keeping the energy up after intermission. To be fair, that “flaw” may be hard-wired into Kafka’s source material: How can an existential story succeed without a little tedium? As it is, there’s no upping of the stakes in Act Two, which makes the evening feel longer than it should. There's plenty enough to like, however.

Pictured above: Elizabeth H. Richards (left), David Johnson, Ashley Ivey (groveling on floor), and Christopher Janson round out a strong cast in Catalyst's ambitious-if-uneven adaptation of Kafka's The Trial.

The story goes like this: On his 30th birthday, Joseph K., a bank executive, wakes up to find himself turned into a bug. (Oh, wait — that’s that other Kafka story.) No, he’s actually told he’s under arrest on charges to be named later, though of course they never are. After a maddening encounter with two eerily polite and clueless policemen, he is permitted, to his surprise, to leave his apartment for work.

The fact of being under arrest does nothing to impede K's daily routine or indeed, his sex life; the fact of being Accused of He Knows Not What only seems to make him more irresistible to women. The Trial, or this version of it anyway, seems to share with Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being the idea that encroaching totalitarianism is great for everyone’s libido. Welles used K's reluctant-or-not promiscuity to add a layer of subtext to his film by casting Anthony Perkins, whom Welles believed to be gay (and necessarily closeted), in the role; thus, the endless advances from beautiful women became yet another source of humiliation to him.

There's nothing that sly happening onstage in David Johnson's portrayal of K, unfortunately: He's just seems like a prosperous, good-looking dude who gets around. Much worse, he never seems to regard the titular "trial" as anything more than a hazily defined nuisance. He's confused but never afraid, which deprives the show of the sense of gathering threat it desperately needs.

As it stands, we get the idea that nothing very terrible is going to happen to K as long as he can just accept the vagaries of Fate. But he’s obsessed with clearing his good name, a mission that requires of him increasingly bizarre and hopeless errands, which wear him down psychologically. Then again, maybe it’s all of the encounters with crazy people — his lawyer, his lawyer’s sepentine assistant, Leni; one of his fellow Accused, Block, a spineless ruin of a husk of a of shadow of a man — that wear him down. Or perhaps they only seem crazy because K is going crazy. Or — no! — maybe it’s the entire world that’s gone crazy!

You get the idea: Up is Down, Purple Is Yellow, 91 is Columbus, OH, Jenny Lewis and Neko Case sing in the same band. Smile, you’re in Kafkaville!

Fortunately, Gallu’s staging of his adaptation is not nearly so what-you-will. As with his production of Bertold Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui from this time last year, he’s brought a disciplined and clear artistic vision to life here, and chosen his supporting cast and other collaborators with care.

Ralph Cosham’s blandly cheerful recorded narration gives us an instant understanding of K.’s orderly, uncontemplative internal life -- you wish Johnson, as K, had tried to play against it a bit more. In the absence of that harmony, the device is overused: Sometimes it tells us things that are already obvious, without humorous or ironic effect; other times, it tells things that should be apparent from Johnson performance, but aren't.

The same cannot be said of Michael D’Addario’s videos, which are projected on the walls of the triangular stage to give us an alternate angle of the scene we’re simultaneously witnessing live. The actors’ need to compete, almost, with the video production makes these scenes crackle with tension, and the small disconnects between the live-performance and the video is perfect for a show that’s all about paranoia. (On the night I saw the show, Gallu had to step in as understudy for Grady Weatherford. Even the unintentional gambit of having two different actors play the same character in the video versus onstage worked beautifully.)

As he did with Arturo Ui, Gallu uses shadowplay and sound to make his scenes of violence chilling but non-exploitive. Adding to the surreal atmosphere is his canny use of double and triple-casting: The program identifies only K as an individual character, listing the rest of the cast simply members of the ensemble, even though their multiple characters are addressed by name in the show. They deserve to be named. Ashley Ivey, appearing both as Block and later as a priest who tries to console K (kind of) is superb. Catherine Deadman, um, nails the sexuality-as-terror thing as both one of K’s neighbors and the wife of — well, it’s too complicated to explain, really. But she’s terrific, as is Elizabeth Richards as Leni, an influential aide to K’s feckless, Latin-quoting lawyer.

Catalyst Theatre Company’s production of The Trial runs through November 3rd. Tickets — did we mention they’re only $10? — are available here or at (800) 494-TIXS.

Pictured above right: Catherine Deadman and David Johnson.