WOYZECK

The Tobacco Factory, Bristol

ONE STAR

When Georg Büchner died in 1837 at the age of 23, he left behind fragments of an unfinished play. Nearly a century ahead of its time, Woyzeck was the first real modern psychodrama - the story of a stressed army barber driven into homicidal insanity by his wife's infidelity. It even managed to offer that 20^th Century tagline "based on a true story". It's hardly surprising that it wasn't performed until 1913, when the rest of the world had caught up with Büchner's genius.

A play left unfinished by its author is obviously open to interpretation. The art lies as much in how one arranges the fragments to produce a coherent whole as in how one stages the work. Unfortunately, John Mackendrick's translation leaves too many fragments as just that - a jumbled kaleidoscope of images with little coherence or, in a lot of cases, point to them. These are scenes from a work in progress, stuck roughly together like a archaeologist's first stab at reconstructing an amphora: lopsided, misshapen and unlikely to hold water.

The primary flaw in this production, however, lies in the fact that neither director Dan Danson nor Dan Porter, playing Woyzeck, seem to have read the script very closely to find any trace of development in the central character. Early on in the piece, Woyzeck's wife remarks that "Thinking's wound his mind up like a watch spring. It'll break one of these days." Yet right from his first entrance, Porter's Woyzeck operates on a constant high-pitched shriek of certifiable derangement. His mind is clearly already well and truly broken as he stares and starts with the glazed expression of the asylum. Already so firmly sunk in psychosis, this leaves Porter nowhere to unravel further when Woyzeck finally does discover his wife's affair and - theoretically - tips over the edge. He can only slip into the absurd grimaces, growlings and physical contortions more reminiscent of a Hollywood werewolf transformation. When his friend Andres then remarks "You're not right", the only natural response from an onlooker can be "And it took you this long to notice?"

Circling around Woyzeck, the other performances are for the most part equally monotonal. Martin Ritchie's Captain has the polish and timing to carry off the caricaturing style adopted by the cast, but the rest of the production has a strong feel of a drama school's end-of-term performance: Expressionist Theatre by the textbook. Right down to the lighting design, there is nothing here which is either inspired or inspiring. Watching Woyzeck is never a particularly comfortable experience - but it should be the story that makes the audience flinch, not the production.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE