Woyzeck Review

§ December 15th, 2008 § Filed under Woyzeck

Things get hot and wet between the Drum Major and Marie as they tangle bodies at the water factory on stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  The Drum Major captured the attentions of not only those on stage, but everyone in the audience as well with his overemphatic entrance, and actions on stage.
Sex, drugs, and rock n roll seemed to be what director Gísli Orn Gardarsson had in mind for the Drum Major in this adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck.  Gradually, he took more of his clothes off as the play progressed.  This might have been an attempt to please the audience, but I didn’t find it to be that appealing.
Not all of the characters had such sexual finesse.  In fact, Woyzeck, played by Ingvar E. Sigurdsson, seemed to carry the persona of a spoiled toddler, and everyone else seemed to treat him as one.  The Doctor played by actress Harpa Arnarsdóttir, and the Captain played by Víkingur Kristjánsson wouldn’t seem to give Woyzeck a break throughout the entire production.  Humiliation seemed to surround his every encounter with a new character.
From flying cupids, to a bungee cord entrance, this play seemed to have it all.  Surprisingly enough, the director actually chose to include some of the material out of Büchner’s actual story!  To be brutally honest, none of the special effects were necessary to the plot, and they just convoluted the story.  By the end, I wasn’t sure whether I should applaud, or wait for another rock and roll piece to blow my eardrums out of my head.
This production hardly followed the thought process that made Woyzeck the classic that it has become today.  Sure, I’m all for “free interpretation” of art, but I have to say that I’m completely against the butchering of a timeless classic.  I will say this for the play though; the order in which the put the scenes made perfect sense!  Other than that though, I was pretty disappointed.  If you’re a person who likes to watch unedited classics in their fullest, I wouldn’t suggest spending your money on this production.  But if you’re a person who is into spontaneous humor, and a strong believer of creative interpretation, you might want to check it out.

-Varun Sahadevan