Franz & Marie at Charing Cross Theatre – review

Franz Woyzeck, once the best soldier in his unit, now can’t even do ten press-ups on command. A guinea pig for the army doctor, Woyzeck lives on a handful of peas every day, to see how far the proletariat man can be pushed. His flashbacks of violent battle grounds grow more vivid, while his sanity wanes, and he is pushed, by his scheming doctor, to believe that his common-law wife Marie is sleeping with another soldier; that their newborn baby isn’t his.

There’s a lot to like in this new musical adaptation of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. The 14-strong actor-musician ensemble are wildly talented. Following in the footsteps of the award-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the whole cast remains on stage for most of the show, occasionally cordoned off by semi-transparent hessian curtains, but still visible and playing throughout. Where in Benjamin Button this constant crowd gave a sense of community pushing into the saccharin – the supporting performers looking on lovingly for every scene – there’s enough edge in this plot to balance it out.

While I have no real historical knowledge of musical instruments, there is, at the beginning, a sense of coherence with the band – accordion, jingle stick, tin whistle and violin – and the 19th-century plot. I instinctively balk at the later appearance of an electric guitar, but by the time Eve Polycarpou’s number “Beware, Beware” is accompanied by a chorus of ‘ooh la la la’s, I’m grateful for the blatant anachronism, which comes to add a surreal charm to an otherwise bleak tale.

There’s plenty of plot to hang a musical on here, and Rob Shepherd and Chris Broderick have done a fantastic job of creating melodic and stylistic variety, from heartrending ballads to nightmarish circus numbers. While a good chunk of the music does well to further the story, there’s a handful that serve as unnecessary filler and slow the pacy plot to a near-holt.

There’s an eerie clownish thread throughout, which works for the most part: the fair has come to town, and with it a wind of discord and such. But it often slips from eerie into unhinged, feeling more like an asylum; the ensemble sometimes look more like they’re planning on eating whoever it is they’re circling.

Teresa Howard’s adaptation borders on the sentimental for sure, but it’s a grim story, and ultimately benefits from a little sap.