Woyzeck on the Highveld at The Barbican

Woyzeck on the Highveld at The Barbican

08 September, 2011
by: Naima Khan

Woyzeck on the Highveld is a perfect balance of thought provoking characters and innovative, entertaining theatre making. 

One of the most striking elements of Handspring's Woyzeck on the Highveld, is that rare thing – a storyteller with a personality of his own. Played to perfection by Mncedisi Shabangu, he is a showman as well as a narrator and becomes as much a character as Woyzeck and his wife as he introduces the story of “a beautiful murder.”

The script for this adult puppet show is suitably sparse but evenly distributed between the incredibly well defined characters that make up Woyzeck's hopeless world. His boss seeks to exert his superiority, his doctor is all about the exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few and his wife Maria is somehow still in love with life, despite her circumstances.

What Woyzeck fails to realise is that Maria is also the wife of a desperately unhappy man and so she finds happiness with someone else. So disillusioned is her husband that he looks to the stars for guidance but finds only his own germinating madness and is eventually led astray by his psychosis. His anger overwhelms him and Maria ends up suffering most.

Played out in front of William Kentridge's beautifully soft, black and white animation perfectly paired African folk music we are taken from scene to scene in this sparse but gripping setting. The animation outweighs the script and conveys much more emotion and atmosphere than the words. But there are some things missing. Maria's misery for example isn't really highlighted as much as it should be. When she betrays Woyzeck and begins a relationship with another man, it doesn't feel like she's finally getting the happiness she deserves. Instead, it seems cruel when they're supposed to be struggling together.

Nonetheless, their relationship makes Woyzeck on the Highveld is a solemn piece of theatre dotted with moments of hilarity that come mostly via Shabangu it is the perfect balance of thought provoking characters and innovative, entertaining theatre making. 


Woyzeck on the Highveld runs at The Barbican, Silk Street Theatre until 10th September.
 

Naima Khan