Please note: This review dates back to previews.

From the streets of Peckham to the red carpet, British national treasure John Boyega has risen to dizzying heights at the forefront of Hollywood's elite. The young actor is temporarily hanging up his lightsaber to tread the boards in Jack Thorne's new take on Woyzeck, in which he embodies the tormented titular soldier with a raw and boundless energy.

Originally penned by German dramatist Georg Buchner, Thorne's Woyzeck is transported to 1980s Berlin, a city divided by the Iron Curtain. A lowly grunt in the British Army Forces tasked with keeping watch on the historic wall, Frank Woyzeck is dogged by the drudgery of poverty as he struggles to provide for his Irish girlfriend Marie and their baby. They are restrained not only by their new and foreign surroundings but by their less-than-humble abode, an apartment above a halal butchers that emanates the smell of meat in the stifling summer. Desperate to provide a better life for his family, Woyzeck participates in a medical trial, paid to pop pills with an unknown effect.

This decision, as well as the rapidly cracking foundations beneath his relationship with Marie, only serves to compound the fragility of Woyzeck's mind, one that hides a deeply disturbing childhood. Thus the scene is set for a downfall of Shakespearean proportions. In fact, Thorne seems to have taken a leaf directly out of the Bard's book, with Woyzeck mirroring Othello's descent into madness.

Boyega gives a dedicated and ambitious performance, falling in and out of despair with an unsettling grace. His Woyzeck is a passionate dreamer, bound by the crippling limitations of reality and his lot in life. While his magnetism and stage presence is undeniable, I can't help but feel the role demands more maturity and subtlety than he is able to give. This is also evident in the play's writing and staging. A common pitfall with any adaptation, there is always the danger of the original text becoming lost in translation. As Boyega's Woyzeck is haunted by distorted visions of a grotesque carnival of his loved ones and contemporaries, it feels as if the emotional depth of his pain is eclipsed by a hackneyed, overly-theatrical version of mania.

While I disagree with certain aesthetic choices, there are moments that shine through. The rapport between Woyzeck and Marie (played with conviction by Penny Dreadful’s Sarah Greene) is at times tender, at times harrowing, but ultimately believable, buoying the manic onstage action with glimpses of a truthful connection. Thorne’s production may be flawed, but it contains enough of the unfinished original to attest to the brilliance of Buchner’s modern tragedy.

REVIEWED BY TEIA FREGONA

Tuesday 16 May 2017
The Old Vic, London
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