It was a crime with little cause and no consequence: Friedrich Franz Woyzeck, a military barber, killed the one soul who loved him, his common-law wife Marie. His stark death wish inspired “Woyzeck,” Georg Buchner’s harrowing 1835 tale of a simple soldier crushed by everything about him. Appropriately, Buchner composed his absurdist nightmare in fragments as shattered as the man himself.
The seminal play still fascinates: Woyzeck is a casebook creature of circumstances and a negation of, as Buchner wryly says, the “progress of civilization.” Employing a carnival barker as chorus, the playwright pretends to reduce Woyzeck to a sideshow exhibit. He means to expose the 30-year-old soldier from the outside in, with no hint of an inner life. We must imagine it ourselves.
For all his despair, Woyzeck knows he’s more than a machine (as his doctor treats him) or a “moody” sinner (as his captain dismisses him). He has one saving security, Marie’s love and innocence. When he fears he’s lost her to a philandering drum major, Woyzeck succumbs to self-hate, and, like a poor man’s Othello, kills what he loves best.
“Woyzeck” suggests a 45-minute fever dream. (Buchner reportedly penned it while ill with typhoid.) The barber’s confessions seethe with images of a blood-stained moon, a devouring darkness, and the knife that will cut him off from any future. The story verges on insanity–and some productions, like The Hypocrites’ revival at Voltaire, exploit that literary lunacy to their peril.
Though skittish and unfocused, Sean Graney’s staging suggests an uncontrollable delirium. Raw, rough, and rushed, it lacks pacing and precision but it drives home Woyzeck’s isolation. Graney surrounds Christopher Cintron’s anguished Woyzeck with gibbering fools, so many emanations of Woyzeck’s darkest frenzies.
Cintron, unfortunately, doesn’t build his Woyzeck to a breakdown. He rants unequivocally, with equal emphasis given to every outburst; here every straw is the last one. More convincing, Mechelle Moe’s Marie is a woman sustained by vanity’s sweet lies; she’s every unwitting victim who never saw it coming. Though Matthew Craig plays the dour captain with saving restraint, too many others in this pell-mell ensemble go wrong trying to wrestle the script into submission. Even a fever must flow.
“Woyzeck”
When: Through Jan. 25
Where: Voltaire, 3231 N. Clark St.
Call: 773-665-8280
