Woyzeck – The McCarthy at Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough

Writer: Georg Buchner

Adapter: Daniel Kramer

Director/Designer: Rob Salmon

Rob Salmon has achieved wonders with the SJT Young Company in this almost expressionist treatment of Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck in the version by Daniel Kramer. His cast of some dozen actors may lack the experience of more senior players, but they compensate with bristling performances and coherent ensemble playing.

Buchner’s Woyzeck is one of those legendary plays that have an enormous influence without anyone being able to pinpoint what exactly the playwright’s intentions were. Buchner died in his early 20s, leaving his play unfinished and in tiny, almost illegible handwriting. From his death in 1837 it look until 1913 for something like his original version to be performed – an earlier version under the name Wozzeck (that tiny handwriting!) had previously existed. Hence the need for an adaptor.

Yet it still has a huge reputation as “the first modern play” and a precursor of expressionism. It exists in a surrealistic world poised between naturalism and nightmare. Woyzeck is a soldier who earns a few extra pence doing menial jobs for his Captain and submitting to medical experiments for the Doctor – the latest, eating nothing but peas. His mental state deteriorates, he hallucinates, his wife Marie betrays him with a Drum Major  and he stabs her to death. There it more or less ends: different writers have added Woyzeck’s death, but Kramer prefers to  leave him in torment while an actor delivers a matter-of-fact list of statistics and (a wonderful final touch from Salmon) a host of giant peas rains down upon him.

The production style is established from the start, with Harry Lee’s Sergeant goose-stepping across the stage and characters coming and going, sometimes with no obvious purpose. In truth the volume gets a bit much with Keane Liley’s screaming Doctor, but he (like the entire cast) is totally committed to the concept. Thomas Dawes’ lazy Captain, Jack Pickering’s bullying Drum Major and Robyn Chambers’ morally ambiguous Marie all feed Woyzeck’s hallucinations. As Woyzeck himself Will Ireland is remarkable, meek, humble, confused, seeking reassurance, reduced to a feral state by his misfortunes.

The whole concept is what impresses most. Apart from a screen through which other actors may be observed the stage is empty: various bits of furniture are occasionally brought on. The action sometimes pitches in to the absurd, such as the circus animals that cavort round the Showman, At other times violence is brutally naturalistic: the Drum Major’s beating of Woyzeck, for instance, or the murder of Marie, though the beating is given a surreal twist by being accompanied by the song Happy-Go-Lucky Me. The sound (Ernest Acquah) and lighting (Mark “Tigger” Johnson) always intensify the drama.

This Woyzeck, with its power supported by keen understanding, should boost the growing reputation of the SJT Young Company.

Runs until 16 May 2026