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.