March 2-20 1994 Wed - Sun 8.30
At the old CUB Ale House, Bouverie St. Carlton
Writer: Kate Herbert around 12 Feb 1994
This article was published in The Melbourne Times after Feb 10 1994. KH
Woyzeck is an unfinished manuscript by 17th century
German writer Georg Buchner. To highlight the fragmentation of the original
text, Gas Theatre will perform the play in a derelict building in Bouverie
Street. Non-theatre sites are exciting and a challenge to the audience who can
never relax comfortably in an upholstered seat. A viewer is compelled to engage
with not only the actor, the text and the meaning, but with the physical
environment. To misquote Marshall McLuhan, "The location is also the
message."
Location theatre is very popular in Melbourne. We have seen
theatre in motor repair shops, The Old Gaol, warehouses, the brewery, cafes,
swimming pools, the Gallery moat, parks and gardens. Gas have selected the old
Ale House site of the Carlton and United Brewery in Bouverie Street. The
basement of the brewery was used by Tarquin Theatre in September but according
to Gas actor, Charlie Powles, working in an above ground venue poses fewer
logistical obstacles.
The Ale House is a two-storey bluestone edifice constructed
in the 1880's. The ceiling and walls have been eliminated so it is a cavernous,
long and narrow warehouse with holes in walls, shattered bricks for flooring
and vestiges of crumbling walls. Although it may involve an enormous amount of
work clearing the space for a performance, such a dramatic and blasted
landscape provides a ready-made design for a play.
The Gas Theatre production of Woyzeck is directed by
Lucien Savron and performed by Powles, Tom Wright, Nick Crawford Smith and Meg
White, will use the whole length of the space with the audience at one end
giving them a deep perspective view of the performance.
White and Powles describe this play as mythic, archetypal, a
true tragedy. They see the characters as "inexorably doomed." It is
not a play which highlights a message although it does speak to a modern
audience about two people crushed under the weight of their socio-economic
position and their existence. It is not judgmental. It is a universal
existential dilemma. Says White, "If you take away the universality it
becomes two dimensional."
The building, says Powles, looks like an army barracks which
is particularly relevant given that Woyzeck is a soldier. Powles says the play
looks at images of ruin and decay, but it also contrasts the wholesome presence
of nature with the destructive presence of civilisation. This lends symbolic
significance to the weeds which have overgrown the site.
The broken images of the location reflect directly the text.
Buchner died at an early age before completing his manuscript so Woyzeck is a
collection of scenes which are often composed in different configurations. The
various translations also take liberties with meaning and structure, but the
company has selected that by Muller, a translation which highlights the
fragmentation of the play and which suits the style of Gas Theatre.
It is the tale of Woyzeck, a poor and unstable soldier who
is driven to murder Marie, his lover and mother of his child because of her
dalliances with other men. This may sound a primitive reaction, but our society
is no more sophisticated. Most murders are still domestic. Love and jealousy
rule.
Says Powles, "Buchner opens a whole world of
conflicting ideas and motivations for why the murder takes place...On the one
hand he is saying he was just a victim of the pressures of the times and on the
other he is not excusing it at all and is showing the real evil of taking that
sort of step."
The characters are broadly drawn and are often described as
caricatures. White who plays Marie, sees a direct relationship with characters
of the Commedia dell'Arte: Dottore, Capitano, Colombina and Harlequin. She is
quick to explain that the Commedia clowns are always happy being who they are,
whereas these characters want to be someone else.
"The Doctor wants to be more (of a) doctor than he
really is, and Marie wants to be more (of a) woman than she really is."
They are none of them satisfied. and all have a dark internal level. "If
you make them clowns they lose the drama."
Powles describes Buchner as a fan of Shakespeare. "You
can read the allusions to Macbeth and Hamlet and he also finds appealing those
clown elements in Shakespeare. It sits well in the context of the play because
the world is so dark and the view so pessimistic. Yet within that Buchner has
allowed this light, the joy is just poking around the edges". He is,
however, clear that they wish to avoid caricatures.
The play has a balance of social and psychological commentary.
It would be easy to dismiss the murder as the act of a psychotic who suffers
visions and obsessions, but Woyzeck's unbearable social context is constantly
being indicated.
"The visions, the nightmares he has, are classic
manifestations of the oppressed spirituality of 20th century existence."
says Powles. "Everything has been squeezed into being a soldier so the
only way the soul can manifest itself is in this perverted, disruptive
way."
Buchner, a poet and playwright, is considered one of the
great voices of German literature. He died of typhus in 1837 at the age of 23
but his plays have an uncanny link with the late 20th century. In this
decimated ale house the audience will experience "a murder in a context of
social and political oppression and perversions of the natural order", a
story which echoes the Balkans, urban decay and political dictatorships in the
90's.
By Kate Herbert
