WOYZECK. To 15 July.
London
WOYZECK
by Georg Buchner adapted by Gisli Orn Gardarsson translated by Ruth Little, Gisli Orn Gardarsson, Jon Atli Jonasson
Barbican Theatre To 15 July 2006
Mon-Sat 7.45pm
Runs 1hr 35min No interval
TICKETS: 0870 120 7515
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 July
Loud bursts at times, but usually most impressive in its quiet stretches.
Left as raw fragments in 1837 when its author died, 14 years younger than the century, Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck is unlike his other famous, finished, drama Danton’s Death. Woyzeck is bottom of the human pile – he’s called a monkey in this version – oppressed by those with power or rank above him, losing his wife and driven to violent despair.
Incomplete, it could be shifted towards farce, tragedy, satire or fantasy (what Buchner’s Germany a century on would call Expressionism). Its roughness gave Buchner a place in the anti-idealist German strain Max Spalter called Brecht’s Tradition. Now the Brechtian hegemony has waned Woyzeck stands open to even wider interpretations.
Robert Wilson brought an over-neat production to the Barbican in 2002. Now Iceland’s Vesturport Theatre bring a rougher, yet still elaborate version, set around metallic factory, or power-station, piping over, it eventually turns out, a water-tank. Making a play written about the army fit the modern industrial setting is initially effortful but the idea soon recedes into the background (the stage foreground itself is an open, lower space).
Water here is about sexual energy rather than purification. It’s where Woyzeck’s Marie cavorts with the Drum Major and where Woyzeck ultimately drowns her. The medical experiments to which he’s subjected involve his near-drowning in a head-encasing tank. There are examples too of Vesturport’s trademark physicality; improbably but theatrically the Drum Major first asserts himself on a trapeze and bungee harness, while Woyzeck’s friend Andres gets hung up on aerial ropes.
All this creates an aptly rough, tough world. But it can overlay the play. Buchner used a recent murder as his start, and the overt theatricality, with its sheer wealth of staging and the healthy energy of the performances (excluding perhaps Marie’s short-skirted, bright coloured simplicity and passivity), seems alien to the small-town animality of the script.
Still, it’s hard to complain about Icelandic actors who variously sing and fly, and act in English, fluently if slightly stiffly. Ingvar E Sigurdsson is an excellently strong-looking, subservient Woyzeck. And the score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis creates an often quiet, eerily apt atmosphere.
Woyzeck: Ingvar E Sigurdsson
Marie: Nina Dogg Filippusdottir
Captain: Vikingur Kristjansson
Doctor: Harpa Arnarsdottir
Drum Major: Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson
Andres: Olafur Egill Egilsson
Fiddler: Arni Petur Gudjonsson
Sergeant: Erlendur Eiriksson
Entertainer: Olafur Darri Olafsson
Swan/Doctor’s Assistant: Johannes Niels Sigurdsson
Choir: Haraldur Agustsson, Ivar Orn Arnason, Bjarni Bjarnason, Haraldur Bjorn Halldorsson, Thorsteinn J Karason, Karl Erlingur Oddason, Hjalti Thor Thorsson, Karl Sigurdsson
Director: Gisli Orn Gardarsson
Designer: Borkur Jonsson
Lighting: Larus Bjornsson
Sound: Olafur Orn Thoroddsen
Music: Nick Cave, Warren Ellis
Lyrics: Nick Cave
Choral arrangements: Petur Thor Benediktsson
Movement: John-Paul Zaccarini
Costume: Filippia Elisdottir
Voice/Text coach: Ellen Newman
Assistant director: Jon Atli Jonasson
2006-07-06 10:17:50