Britain's longest-serving theater critic, Michael Billington of The Guardian newspaper, is famous for not lavishing praise on his subjects easily or often.
So when Billington tipped his hat to "Kafka's Monkey" in a 2009 review — rhetorically asking, "Is there anything Kathryn Hunter can't play?" — it was a sure sign that one of England's leading actresses had done something special with her role as ape-man Red Peter in the production by Irish dramatist Colin Teevan.
Following that world premiere, which was directed by Walter Meierjohann at the Young Vic theater in London, critics — and audiences — echoed Billington's praise for both the play and Hunter's disturbing, sympathetic and strangely realistic creation of a chimpanzee who comes to see better than humans how their greed for "progress" and new things would be their undoing.