Understudies don't get much recognition in the theatre unless the lead actor has to withdraw for an extended period. So I'm happy to blow the trumpet for Theo Solomon, who stepped in to play Woyzeck at the Old Vic yesterday afternoon in the absence of John Boyega. Solomon's portrayal of a British army squaddie troubled by inner demons was pitch perfect, but I was also very impressed by Sarah Greene as Marie and by a number of other performances.
Despite the excellent acting, I'm not fully convinced by this production. This has nothing to do with a lack of respect for Buechner's original text -- a series of fragmentary scenes that he left unfinished. But there's an unresolved tension between the naturalism of Jack Thorne's adaptation and the expressionist style of Joe Murphy's direction, heavily reliant on a non-naturalistic set design by Tom Scutt. Woyzeck's story is told through his eyes as he descends into a form of madness, so the audience sees a distorted version of reality. Thorne's text uses some scenes from the original text but adds a great deal of complicated backstory. Woyzeck's relationship with Marie, the mother of his child and his eventual victim, becomes more central to the story than in Buechner. And the play has a very precise setting in time and place -- Berlin in the early 1980s -- which seems to limit and narrow down its universality.
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