The Irish Times

Dublin Fringe Festival reviews

Woyzeck*****
Ss Michael and John,
Essex Street West, Temple Bar

Patsy McGarry

I have to say this is the first production of Georg Buchner's classic I have liked. Indeed "liked" is faint praise, because this is a superb production of a potentially very dour drama. In this Rough Magic, Seeds 2 Showcase show, directed by the clearly very talented Matt Torney, we are moved to pity by the contrast of emotions he elicits through presenting tragedy in cabaret style. It is a brave but in this instance very effective step as juxtaposing tragedy against an opposite background could so easily result in farce. But, not here. This is a highly imaginative, clever, very sexy production of a play that can be anything but. The murder scene, even, is as erotic as it is awful, suggesting the act which begins life with one that ends it. The cast are excellent, especially Malcolm Adams in the lead, with wonderful music direction from Helene Montague. Just one quibble. Would the Drum Major please remove his wedding ring during performance. It undermines the credibility of his character!

Sunday Tribune
Theatre
Life's a killer

Rachel Andrews

Woyzeck

The pain of life is (also) the primary theme of Georg Buchner's socially-outraged play about the futile situation of the poverty stricken underclass in 1830's Germany. Although focused on the story of one man, Woyzeck (also the title of the play), this is a drama that, in emphasising the blithe superiority and contempt of the higher social classes for those underneath them, still rings strikingly true today.

Director Matt Torney sets the play in its own era, but creates a Brechtian-like artificiality by overlaying it with a cabaret atmosphere: he uses masks, songs, and music to whisk us through the tale of Woyzeck, the servant of a German captain who, desperate to make ends meet for his girlfriend, Marie, and his child, also allows a lunatic doctor to experiment on him and has eaten nothing but peas for days.

Torney has also set himself a risky experiment, and it is hard not to wonder if he will succeed in merging the production's stylised nature with the tragic realism of the play itself. But if this director's voice is strong, it is also careful, and Torney knows when to pull back, giving Malcolm Adams, as Woyzeck, a chance to portray his character's wretchedness after he kills the adultering Marie, having succumbed to the delusions that have been haunting him.