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The London International Mime Festival

WOYZECK

Presented by Sadari Movement Laboratory (Korea)

Based on Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck

Director: Do-wan im

Music: Astor Piazzolla

Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre

24 - 26 January, 2008

Last night, as I left the Queen Elizabeth Hall, and made my way passed the Festival Hall and crossed the river, there was a spring in my step and a smile on my face; all was right with the world and with my fellow man, even to the extent of upgrading my usual miserly gift from 20p to 50p to each of the beggars along Hungerford Bridge. And what has this to do with Sadari Movement Laboratory’s Woyzeck? Why everything. There can be no greater praise than to say that one has left the theatre after a long and perhaps trying day, inspired, refreshed and energized. In this case perhaps all the more surprising, considering that this was no light-hearted escapist entertainment but a bitter and sometimes horrific tragedy.

I can appreciate that expensive programmes for the individual companies on show at the Mime Festival would be unjustified but there is much I would like to know. For example I knew nothing of Astor Piazzolla, the composer who provides a superb score by turn strident (Stravinsky) evocative (Debussy) and schmaltzy (Kurt Wiell) to accompany the precise and skilled choreography. (Thanks to Google I have remedied this shortcoming - www.piazzolla.org ) No-one is credited with the choreography, presumably the director, who has guided the troupe through this complex work. We read that he trained at the Lecoq in Paris, but one would like to know so much more about him and the company. How do they function and what is the cultural climate of Seoul today that can nurture such excellence?

The piece opens with a spotlight on a single chair, a very ordinary wooden chair. It is a little like the famous Van Gogh chair, but no glowing sunlight emanates from it - this is a chair of despair. A figure enters and dances with it. He is soon joined by others who all hold onto the chair. The first of many surprises; it comes to pieces in their hands; so that they are left holding a leg, a frame, a bit of the seat. Clearly and instantly these become hand-weapons of war. I am reminded of the half-danced half-mimed movements of Kurt Jooss’s Green Table.

I am tempted to describe each and every scene which unfolds before us, but I must content myself with mentioning a few highlights; an incredible routine of chairs and dancers played in a straight line right down-stage; as satisfying to watch as a Tiller Girls high-kicking routine; a lyrical Pas de Deux – or if I include the two chairs, Pas de Quatre - equalling in passion the best of Macmillan’s work; a scene of unspeakable horror in which disembodied heads prompt Woyzeck to kill his love Marie; the slovenly Captain scratching his belly, while Woyzeck lies rigid between two chairs (with no support, I could detect); a final ballet of death and mourning for the beautiful Marie; and a series of quite astonishing flashbacks to earlier scenes, with the regrouping of performers and chairs between blackouts with uncanny rapidity.. To me, an unknown aid to this, are the tiny lights on the stage floor, possibly just florescent patches that guide the cast to their positions.

I would guess that most of us in the audience last night were disadvantaged to some small degree, in not being able to understand the dialogue with which Georg Büchner’s story is partially told, though in the main the import is clear enough.

Again, this is not the place to discuss the interesting place in the history of German theatre held by Georg Büchner, and the later expressionist writers who I think have been unjustly neglected as a source of inspiration to contemporary theatre.

I will conclude by congratulating the organisers of London Mime Festival in giving us the chance to witness this exciting company.