Woyzeck’s Head. Third Wall Returns to Arts Court.
Woyzeck’s Head based on the text by Georg Büchner, adapted by and directed by James Richardson
A Third Wall Theatre Production.
As the title suggests, this interpretation by Third Wall director James Richardson of Woyzeck, Georg Büchner’s unfinished 1837 masterwork about a man who is going mad, focuses on the protagonist’s head, the seat of memory, emotion and intellect. Gone, or at least relegated to the almost-tangential, are the class and other external social concerns that are usually showcased when the original work is performed. That focus is a good and a bad thing.
On one hand, it allows Richardson to explore the complexity of Woyzeck’s experience, here depicted by actor Andrew Moore. Was his murder of his apparently unfaithful wife Marie real or imagined? Are the characters played by Kristina Watt and Katie Bunting, characters who drift in and out of his head and torture him psychologically, factually portrayed or are they fantasies? Is his diet of peas only – part of a medical experiment in which he’s involved – real or imagined? In other words, memory, emotion and intellect, along with time past and present, swirl together in a heightened portrayal of the way they do in everyday life. Objective reality and the ability of the intellect to deal with it are gone; chaos and the incomprehensible rule.
On the other hand, the limited focus, symbolized by the cage-like set in which all the action takes place, becomes tiresome. Moore, exhausted at the end of the performance this reviewer saw, has been directed to operate nearly always at a fever pitch, pacing around his cage, gripping his head as the play explores what’s going on inside it. At first that fevered pitch works, drawing us into his deep psychic pain. But without any real development, and absent a conventional narrative through-line, the show and our reactions hit a wall by mid-point.
As well, there’s a clinically detached element to Richardson’s interpretation which underscores Woyzeck’s alienation from himself and reality but which works against the show’s attempt to pull us inside the nightmare that is Woyzeck’s experience. Coupled with the continually fraught nature of Moore’s performance, that detached element loosens further our engagement in the proceedings.
A mixed blessing, Woyzeck’s Head is more than just sound and fury. But there’s not enough of the more to satisfy fully.
Woyzeck’s Head, Arts Court Theatre; part of the TACTICS series
Adapted, directed and sound design by James Richardson
After Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck
CAST
Katie Bunting – B
Andrew Moore – Woyzeck
Kristina Watt – A
CREATIVE TEAM
Graham Price – Stage and Lighting Designer
Sarah Waghorn – Costume Designer
Laurie Shannon – Stage Manager
Cameron A. MacDonald – Assistant Lighting Designer
Kristina Watt – Creative Collaborator