For all of its crackling, at times high camp energy and furious spectacle, there's something very visceral about this staging of of this staging of Georg Buchner's play, written in the first half of the 19th century and apparently never completed - by play's end, it feels like a solid punch in the stomach after 90-odd minutes of being alternately blinded by bright lights and dragged along by one's hair as a series of almost recognisable images flies by one. In fact, it's neither as abstract and weird, nor quite as intense, as that description makes it sound, but that's the flavour of it nonetheless.
Set to the strains of moody string-led music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, with frequent musical numbers by the members of the cast (including Tim Rogers in a genuinely menacing turn as a Puckish figure who functions as part chorus commenting on the events of the play, part spectre haunting the protagonists and on one occasion taking an active hand, and part embodied avatar of some of the play's themes), its depiction of the titular figure's war and being-the-subject-of-insane-science-experiment-fuelled descent makes for uneasily gripping watching. It aims for the gut - and the imagination - more than for the mind, but that's not a criticism, and here it works; the physicality of the performers serves the production well (the doctor, the drum major, the girl (Bojana Novakovic)), complemented the striking set and set-pieces. Quality.
(w/ Michelle, Trang, Steph, Ruth (+ friend Bronwyn), Bec P and Emrys (+ Kemi); Kim also there, and likewise, coincidentally, Krystyna)
