W - WORKERS CIRCUS. 8 July.

London

W WORKERS CIRCUS
by Georg Buchner and Attila Joszef

Riverside Studios (Studio 2) 8 July only
Runs 1hr 30min No interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 July

Bold, brutal Woyzeck+ showing a world where civilisation's for the powerdul and moneyed only.A week's a long time in theatre where this, the first Feeast celebration of central and East European theatre, is concerned, shifting from the lightness of Paper World's clowning to this intense combination of Buchner's fragmentary tragedy with poems by 20th century Attila Joszef, from theatre company Kretakor (chalk circle)'s native Hungary. All 3 Feeast shows are physical theatre, and they indicate the widening vocabulary of the style.

Buchner, whose other well-known play Danton's Death is more realistic, may have done Woyzeck (based on recent events) a favour by leaving it fragmentary when he died (Buchner and Joszef only notched up 55 years between them). It's open to expressionist interpretation and mixed with Attila the Hungarian's ferocious political poetry it comes even more into what Max Spalter in a book some years ago called Brecht's Tradition.

Kretakor make a brutal production of the mix, playing in a mesh-surrounded ghetto, figures clinging to the wire, a building site where sand and water are mixed to make cement. A naked figure sits astride the cement-mixer a Fool whose purity is shown in abstraction from the action, the only figure to remain unclothed. Garments mean society and that means corruption and exploitation. Woyzeck bursts naked from the sand. It's when he sets about his social role he gets clothed.

As army orderly, Woyzeck shaves his Captain as he lies swinging on a suspended tyre. It's done with a care that both parallels and contrasts Woyzeck's wife Marie embracing the Drum Major across the stage. Points of light are picked out, like twinkling stars but they turn out to be hanging bags of urine, which Woyzeck drinks as one of his (barely) human guinea-pig earning devices.

After its dynamic climax, the ensemble as a rock band repeatedly assaulting Woyzeck's ears with a ferocious setting of Joszef's agitprop urge for an attack on the bourgeoisie, the piece moves to silence as he turns on the only person he can, tearing away in jealous rage at Marie's clothing, ripping item after item before killing her. It's a devastating culmination of the fury that's gone before.

Kretakor's The Seagull plays at the 2005 Edinburgh International Festival, 19-22 August 7pm at The Hub. Tickets: 0131 473 2000.

Woyzeck: Zsolt Nagy
Marie: Annamaria Lang
Captain: Sandor Terhes
Doctor: Gergely Banki
Drum Major: Gabor Viola
Andres: Laszlo Katona
Margreth: Borbala Peterfy
Fool: Lilla Sarosdi

Director: Arpad Schilling
Designer: Marton Agh
Lighting: Tamas Banyai
Music: Gabor Rusznyak
Dramaturg: Anna Veress
Assistant director: Balazs Eros

2005-07-25 13:39:36