Woyzeck at Nationaltheater Mannheim

The soldier Woyzeck is in love with Marie and her child. Apart from serving his captain, he earns something extra from the doctor by subjecting himself to medical experiments. He tortures and maltreats himself in this way to secure a livelihood for his family. But Marie meets the drum major and is seduced by him and by the allure of a pleasant life. Woyzeck’s fate is marked by physical and mental humiliation due to his surroundings and a deep human solitude, and his pain builds up more and more. Finally the catastrophe happens: crazy with jealousy, Woyzeck stabs his beloved Marie to death.

In Woyzeck, Georg Büchner juxtaposes instinct and free will. Driven by life and almost suffocating under the strain of his painfully tormented existence, Woyzeck takes his fate into his own hands in a terrible way – or is it madness that turns him into a murderer?
On 18 November 2000 this play, termed an »art musical« by Robert Wilson, had its world première at the Betty Nansen Theater in Copenhagen. Tom Waits’ songs take Büchner’s text to another level. In its own intuitive manner the music tells of the desires, longings, fears and torments that are raging within the characters. Director Georg Schmiedleitner was last in Mannheim directing Ein Sommernachtstraum by William Shakespeare.