Georg Büchner’s
Woyzeck is a play that has
fascinated many. It seems to be the first work of modern drama,
although that is principally because it exists only in fragmentary
form, incomplete at Büchner’s death in 1837, aged 23. I have seen a
number of powerful productions of it, but none that has married that
power to a sense of coherence. Until now, that is, and paradoxically
this greater focus comes from mashing the play up with its
near-contemporary song cycle (also unfinished, also by a creator who
died young), Schubert’s
Winterreise.
Military barber Franz Woyzeck, nowhere near as sharp as his razor, is
further mentally destabilised by the platoon doctor’s use of him as an
all-purpose experimental guinea-pig; when his lover Marie falls
fleetingly for a drum-major, Woyzeck feels he has no alternative but to
stab her to death. (After this point the surviving playscript peters
out.) Adapter/director Conall Morrison punctuates the scenes with
Schubert’s
Lieder, offering
sometimes literal, sometimes figurative insight into the states of mind
of Woyzeck and other characters, most tellingly adding depth to the
portrayal of Marie. Irish chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan is thus far a
middling actor, but few can sell a song with such intensity, be it by
Nick Cave or, as here, by Schubert with lyrics in a new translation by
the late Stephen Clark which is as stark as the January landscape.
O’Sullivan is the only singer-who-acts in a cast otherwise composed of
actors-who-sing, and in the case of Patrick O’Kane’s Woyzeck also gazes
balefully. O’Kane could have been staring into the distance whilst
rehearsing this production in Dublin and have been unsettling people in
Denmark, his look is so penetrating. He combines this with an ability
to make Woyzeck’s inarticulate musings seem eloquent, whether in speech
or song. Jamie Vartan’s set is an Alp of derelict pianos over which the
cast of nine scramble. Having premièred at co-producer the Galway
International Arts Festival in July, the London visit of this
production by the Irish Landmark company is already over, but it plays
the Dublin Theatre Festival in early October and deserves to be more
widely seen still.
Written for the Financial
Times.