Woyzeck (Sydney Festival 2016)

WOYZECK

Created by Robert Wilson, Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan

Based on the play by Georg Büchner

Directed by Jette Steckel

Starring Felix Knopp, Franziska Hartmann

What’s in a name? Misery and suffering, if you’re the titular protagonist of Georg Büchner’s drama, unfinished at the time of his death. For those here to witness the woes of Woyzeck, however, names can be deceiving – this is not Robert Wilson’s work but a remounting by Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre that retains moments of brilliance in an otherwise piecemeal show.

Franz Woyzeck (Felix Knopp) is a simple soldier, living by meagre means – his income is derived from medical experiments and is funnelled into the raising of his child, whose mother (Franziska Hartmann) is sleeping with another man. Woyzeck’s jealousy and frustrations gradually induce a psychosis from which he cannot emerge.

Conceptually, the work is a triumph. The music of Tom Waits is a remarkable match to the circumstances of Büchner’s characters, underdogs with no hope of reprieve. The musicians assembled to recreate Waits’ work are of the highest calibre, emotive and accomplished with just the right amount of smoky jazz bar languor.

The songs themselves are all lifted from Waits’ extensive discography and though the point stands, they often feel shoehorned into the action and are uncomfortably signposted (as is the case with the doctor announcing that ‘God’s Away On Business’). It leaves one longing for a performance of the material without the pretence of so unrelentingly miserable a plot; a musical should not make one long for a concert.

Director Jette Steckel’s greatest contribution is her staging, the grand visual drawcard for the production. An enormous suspended grid of ropes that ascends, descends and pivots to change the space enables the actors – all astounding physical performers – to use the often underutilised vertical space of Carriageworks’ cavernous Bay 17. Along with beautiful use of a booze-soaked drum and an astonishing ending sequence, there’s plenty of eye candy on offer.

Thank goodness, because if you’re there to appreciate Büchner’s muscular prose, you’ll be disappointed. The performance is in German, and the subtitles are so poorly timed and controlled as to be infuriating. They provide such a distraction that it becomes difficult to enjoy the profound efforts of the cast (native German speakers confided to me on the night that this adaptation uses old words even they do not know).

For Waits fans, this is a rewarding production peopled by a hugely talented cast of performers; for those hankering for pure theatre, it’s evidence of how weak structure and poor tech can cripple an otherwise profound experience.

★★★

Woyzeck was reviewed at Carriageworks on Friday January 8 as part of Sydney Festival 2016.
Post originally printed in The BRAG; available at http://www.thebrag.com/arts/woyzeck