The starting point for "Dr. Hoffmann's Sanatorium" was, according to the play's Japanese creator, Keralino Sandorovich, "The idea that someone found an unpublished novel by the great Franz Kafka."
That explanation, of course, refers to the Prague-born author whose works are filled with themes of all-consuming paranoia and nonsensical oppression — as signaled by the sentence that starts "The Metamorphosis," his 1915 novella: "When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."
It's perhaps not the sort of thing everyone would find inspirational, but for Sandorovich, an award-winning playwright, and theater and film director, this latest production marks his third foray into Kafka's life and works.