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Shotgun Players are presenting
a triumphal production of Georg Büchner's Woyzeck
adapted by Robert Wilson with sumptuous music by Tom Waits and
mocking lyrics by Kathleen Brennan. It is superbly directed by
Mark Jackson who, along with a cast of superb singer/actors, makes
this one of the most electrifying productions of the season.
Georg Büchner wrote the play 175 years ago, yet it is a play
for our times. He took inspiration from the trial of J.C. Woyzeck,
a German soldier who murdered his lover in 1821. The defense argued
that the traumatic experience he suffered during the war contributed
to his current mental state. Woyzeck was found guilty, but the
sentencing was delayed for three years while experts examined
his insanity claim. Ultimately, the soldier was beheaded in 1894.
The play debuted in Munich in 1913 and since then there have been
dozens of stage and film adaptations including an opera by Alban
Berg that I saw years ago at the San Francisco Opera.
Robert Wilson's adaptation stops before the famous trial but shows
the causes of Woyzeck's murder of his wife Marie. The 90-minute
drama shows that Woyzeck clearly was a victim of society and of
his own agitated, inarticulate longings. He is a soldier returning
from the war and now he is a lowly barber on a military base.
A self-satisfied censorious regimental captain lectures him on
morality, to which the soldier replies, "If I had a hat and
a watch and a big coat and all the proper words I'd be virtuous
alright." A doctor pays him to eat a wacky diet of peas and
treats him like a specimen. His wife Marie has taken to selling
her body due to poverty and neglect. A friend Andres touts the
inescapability of instinct to Woyzeck and finally he is cuckolded
by a drum major. When pressed, he envisions conspiracies and turmoil
around him.
The Woyzeck score seems influenced by early Kurt Weill
melodies, and the lyrics remind me of the Brechtian dictum, "First
comes bread, then the morals." The songs make you tap your
feet. The opening song, "Misery is the River of the World,"
simplifies things with a carnival oom-pah. It contends "if
there's one thing you can say about mankind,/ There's nothing
kind about man." Bob Starving and the Whalers, who are perched
on the second level of the stage, absorb the precisely disjointed
style of Waits' arrangements.
Alex Crowther as Woyzeck speaks and sings in a natural tone, especially
when he is singing "Coney Island Baby." He does a perfect
performance as a man dejected by life. Madeline H.D. Brown gives
a solid performance as Marie.
Kevin Clarke gives a comically intense performance as the eccentric
tweedledum-tweedledee doctor with a fantastic skew-whiff head
of hair. The insightful Beth Wilmurt mesmerizes as the narrator
of this sideshow. Joe Estlack stops the show with his faultless
rasping and circuitous break dance tango moves on "Another
Man's Vine." Anthony Nemirovsky successfully portrays a pompous
hypercritical regimental captain, while Kenny Toll is first rate
as Woyzeck's friend Andres. Andy Alabran, who plays a gentle village
idiot, is never introduced and stays on the sidelines, perched
on the second tier runway on the side of the theatre, but out
of nowhere he starts to cradle Woyzeck and Marie's infant.
Mark Jackson nails the vibrating tone of the piece. He avoids
the oblique symbolist staging for a more grounded, formal take
with Nina Ball's theatrical set.
