Woyzeck by Gas Theatre ARTICLE 10 Feb 1994

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