| Cinematic and fragmented |
At NYTW |
| Theatr Cenedlaethol Ieuenctid Cymru=-Woyzeck , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , September 4, 2002 |
| Reviews of productions by National Youth Theatre Wales below: "Botticelli's Bonfire": 11 September 2005: 03 September 2005: 03 September 2005 "Cafe Cariad": 10 September 2007: 02 September 2007: 01 September 2007 "Canrif / Century": 07 September 2009 "dead born grow": 02 April 2014:: 05 September 2013 "Faust": 22 August 2000 "Frida and Diego": 12 September 2003: 12 September 2003: 05 September 2003 "Hamlet": 01 October 2001 "Yr Hirdaith/The Long Journey": 08 September 2011 "An Informer's Duty": 22 September 2006: 12 September 2006: 04 September 2006: 16 September 2005 "Magnificent Myths of the Mabinogi": 14 September 2008: 07 September 2008 "No Other Day Like Today": 15 September 2010; 04 September 2010 "Torri Ffiniau": 11 September 2012 "Whispers in the Woods": 17 September 2004 Review: "Woyzeck": In director Firenza Guidi’s interpretation, Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck takes place in the title character’s mind, so her decision to stage the play in a space suggesting a human brain makes sense. The concept is also so clear and vivid it needs no explanation. When a bundle of tangled, loose-ended wires tipped with tiny light bulbs that looks like a nerve or synapse amble jerkily across the empty air 200 feet above the playing space, we know we are in a brain. When the walls surrounding the synapse (and the free-standing audience) flicker with shadow-shows and split to reveal talking heads without bodies, jazz bands, drill squads, and tango dancers, we know this brain belongs to someone who is going mad, or is very imaginative. The Theatr Cenedlaethol Ieuenctid Cymru/National Youth Theatre of Wales’s bilingual production of Woyzeck : Crime or Passion?/Trosedd Neu Angerdd?, currently running at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre, is the final instalment in three productions of Woyzeck in four languages directed by Guidi. The previous two were staged in Indianapolis and Milan. It would be more accurate to say this production is trilingual, or multilingual, as the spectator is bombarded with a babel of visual language as well as dialogue in Cymraeg and English. The cinematic and fragmented nature of this production is entirely in keeping with Buchner’s text and the sadly true legend of its creation. In 1837, Buchner began writing a play about a young man (or two?) who is driven to desperation, madness, and (maybe) crime by poverty, the dehumanising routines of his military career, and the (presumed) infidelity of his girlfriend. After writing four fragments of this work, the 23-year-old playwright contracted typhus and, 17 days later, died. His unfinished script remained unperformed for 60 years. Guidi and the cast and crew were inspired in part by fragments collected from other works of art. Guidi kindly showed me some of these source images, after a rehearsal about two weeks ago. Photographs were tacked up in the Arts Centre’s dance studio. They depicted sand gardens, scaffolding, piles of wax dolls’ heads, busy wallpaper patterns, a litter of kitschy ceramic kittens. In the play, Woyzeck demands of Marie: “Are you cold? When you’re cold you won’t feel the cold.” The magazine clippings ripped out and tacked up among the floor-to-ceiling mirrors showed divided spaces and multiplied objects. In a few pictures, the landscapes of routine and desolation, calm and chaos contain solitary human figures. The production takes off from these patterns and worlds. In spaces like these, people like Woyzeck and Marie wander and may be numbed or lost. Robin Husbands’ set design also recalls the state of Buchner’s script. Tightly stretched rectangular swathes of translucent white cloth cover four stories of scaffolding walls that enclose the Great Hall of the Arts Centre. It looks like many huge sheets of blank paper. Void before creation is not darkness upon waters, but so much white paper untouched by ink, the pages on which Buchner never wrote the rest of his play. Still, the 57-strong cast of skilful young actors are telling a story, not merely creating performance art soup. Woyzeck : Crime or Passion?/Trosedd Neu Angerdd? is coherent and gripping, even though you emerge from this feeling that the world outside the performance space seems unusually quiet, stationary, and empty, or like your mind has been through a few cycles in a washing machine and then suddenly let out. It is very enjoyable, and surprisingly upbeat at times. A scene in a fairground is great fun: you will find yourself moving in slow circles, as many of last night’s spectators did, trying to catch all the sights, sounds, and individual stories being played out around you. If you can get tickets to this show, which is fast selling out, go see how Guidi and TCIC have filled in and multiplied Buchner’s unknowns. As I’ve promised not to reveal anything that might surprise you, I won’t tell you (much) about the conveyor belt from Cardiff Airport. |
Reviewed by: Rebecca Nesvet |
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