WOYZECK. To 5 October.

London

WOYZECK
after Georg Buchner Songs and music by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan

Betty Nansen Theatre company at Barbican To 5 October 2002
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Sun 5pm
Runs 2hr 10min No interval

TICKETS 020 7638 8891 (booking fee)
www.barbican.org.uk/bite (reduced booking fee)
Review Timothy Ramsden 27 September

Style wins out over feeling in this immensely imaginative stagingIf Damien Hirst had handed his pickled cow to a makeover artist, his work might have had the end result of American director Robert Wilson's work with this Danish theatre company. It's blazingly original and devastatingly handsome. But it lacks the smell of the real-life cow pasture.

Woyzeck was left in unfinished fragments, its script languishing through much of the 19th century following Buchner's death at 23. Foot-soldier Woyzeck is allowed no feelings; he hires his body for medical experimentation (here, with two symbiotically hairstyled monster-doctors) while his wife Marie strikes up an affair with a Drum Major. Woyzeck learns of this and murders Marie.

From the start, with its gesticulating model monkey, its artistically scruffy spelled-out 'Woyzeck' and its splash of primary colours on various curtains, and the crazy-perspective Caligari-like sets - the tall, dehumanising house-panels where Marie sights her Drum Major suggest a huge wall of smashed glass - this is a visual fiesta.

And the Waits/Brennan score enhances the action, from the opening Carnival Announcer's song about misery as the river of life. In a mix including piquant tunes, off-key slides and low grumbling lines, it goes a long way to create the madness of Woyzeck's world.

What the evening surrenders is the absolute muck of Woyzeck's bottom-of-the-social heap life. So, Kaya Bruel's Marie seems a middle-class social animal. Her song about red as her favourite colour is so commandingly given, like a Broadway dame, she doesn't need to utter the final 'red' her deep-dyed pouting lips say it all.

Wilson has his cast play in an exaggerated, cartoonish acting style. This isn't easy. But over a full-length distance it begins to seem easier than seeking out character subtleties. Even in this short, brutal play there is feeling jagged, tearing, desperate and vulnerable feeling. It's given up here for slabs and slabs of style.

Woyzeck: Jens Jorn Spottag
Marie: Kaya Bruel
Doctors: Morten Eisner, Marianne Mortenson
Captain: Ole Thestrup
Margret: Ann-Mari Max Hansen/Lotte Andersen
Andres: Morten Lutzhoft
Karl, an idiot: Benjamin Boe Rasmussen
Drum Major: Tom Jensen
Carnival Announcer: Troels II Munk
Christian, Marie's son: Joseph Driffield/Jeppe Dahl Rordam/Morten Thorup Koudal
Young Men and Girls: Metyte Rasmussen, Louise Hornbaek Hansen, Anders Thorup Jensen, Andreas Mollerhoj, Bent Larsen, Nikolaj Darre

Director/Designer/Lighting: Robert Wilson
Sound: Nicolaj Aarup, Jonas Vest
Monkey: Eva Praestlin, Poul Arne Kring
Dramaturges: Kitte Wagner, Wolfgang Wiens

2002-09-30 00:53:03