Woyzeck
By Georg Büchner
Music and lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan


WOYZECK Tamás Keresztes
MARIE Adél Jordán
CAPTAIN Zoltán Bezerédi
DOCTOR Ernő Fekete
TAMBOURMAYOR Ervin Nagy
ANDRES Lehel Kovács
CLOWN Ferenc Elek
WOMAN Eszter Kiss

Set designer: Zsolt Khell
Costumes: Györgyi Szakács
Lighting designer Tamás Bányai
Dramaturg Annamária Radnai
Stage presence Csaba Horváth
Music György Philipp
Assistant director: György Tiwald
Directed by: Tamás Ascher



Photo gallery


Original direction design and visual concept by Robert Wilson
Original performance text version by Ann-Christin Rommen and Wolfgang Wies

 

The latest adaptation of Büchner's Woyzeck in Hungary by internationally acclaimed director Tamás Ascher, features the Tom Waits-version of the original play. Using Büchner's text and Waits' music, Ascher created a dark, tense and somewhat ambient atmosphere, where an ensemble of peculiar figures surround Woyzeck, the ill-fated barber. In the lead role, Tamás Keresztes is superb as Woyzeck, and his cast members, including Adél Jordán, Ernő Fekete and Zoltán Bezerédi, also give equally impressive performances.

Büchner’s original play is based on actual events took place in 1821 in Leipzig, Germany: Johann Christian Woyzeck, an army barber, stabbed his girlfriend to death. Without any signs beforehand, the unexpected and unusually violent murder was a subject to vigorous public debate for several years.

Karl Georg Büchner (1813–1837) wrote only three plays. However, his talent is generally held in great esteem: it is widely believed that, but for his early death, he might have attained the significance of such central German literary figures as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller. Woyzeck was first published only after his death, in 1879, without any particular success. The play found its way to popularity in after World War I.

Musician and performer Tom Waits created his own version of the original play in the last decade of the past century, the adaptation was premiered in 2000. "It deals with madness and children and obsession and murder - all the things that we care about and care about as much now as we did then. It's wild and sexy and curious and catches your imagination and makes you wonder about the people in it and it makes you reflect on your own life. So I guess those are all the things you want from a story and find them interesting 500 years later" – says Waits.