| Confusing, nonsequential, irrational.. |
At NYTW |
| National Youth Theatre of Wales- Woyzeck , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , September 9, 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 "Woyzeck:" 04 September 2002 Review: THE redoubtable Firenze Guidi completes her trilogy of classic European plays as artistic director of the National Youth Theatre of Wales with a bilingual adaptation of a work most of us would possibly have heard of but never seen - Georg Buchner's bizarre study of love, madness and murder, Woyzeck. And, like her first two productions, based on Faust and Hamlet, this is no easy ride for participants or audience. The young performers have to play a variety of fantastical characters who inhabit the real and mental worlds of an ex-soldier who murders his mistress. The audience has to negotiate a play with 41 carefully-listed short scenes but no clear storyline while trapped in a white fabric-lined box that represents the manic hero's mind. The fairground barkers, scantily-clad women, drum majors, workers and madmen move among us, are transported along a mechanical walkway, look down from platforms, peer from slits in the cloth walls, as we are trapped inside Woyzeck's nightmare world of ridicule, oppression, frustration and jealousy. Buchner's original script is but a collection of fragments, the inspired creation of a young man that has inspired a whole tranche of experimental theatre since it was written in the 1830s, presumably because it rejected all the conventions of well-made theatre and had no beginning, middle or end. For those at Aberystwyth Arts Centre - performers and audience - this was a multicoloured, multimedia journey through an interior world where meaning was intertwined with madness. It was confusing, nonsequential, irrational, this travelling in hyperreality - that's what Woyzeck's inner world was and that's what post-modern life is, too. Unlike Ms Guidi's two previous shows with NYTW, this I suspect was more exciting and rewarding for the performers than the audience. If you didn't read the programme notes you didn't stand a chance and the show became a series of sensory experiences - an essential part of the production but not enough to participate fully in what is a complex exploration of human motivation and consciousness. |
Reviewed by: David Adams |
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