Franz & Marie review – Woyzeck folk musical finds heart amid the horror

When Georg Büchner died aged 23 in 1837, he left behind Woyzeck as a bundle of papers that would be ordered and reordered for years to come, eventually discoloured by treatments used to decipher the playwright’s handwriting. His two dozen scenes, with a handful of extra fragments, form a tragic patchwork that is mirrored, in this musical version, by a similar number of stained pieces of cloth stitched into the stage curtains and by the 27 folk songs that thread the story together.

It remains the downfall of Franz Woyzeck, a desperate soldier sinking into madness who grows suspicious of his partner, but – as the first names of its romantic title suggest – the story seeks to better understand both characters. Büchner’s Woyzeck suffers from visions and hallucinations; here they are joined by traumatic battlefield flashbacks. Franz was a war hero, says Marie admiringly, adding a courageous backstory to Büchner’s downtrodden squaddie and suggesting that she sees a glimpse of Franz’s former vigour in the drum major (here named Varg) who brazenly pursues her. In the play, that leads to an affair, but the musical’s Marie fights off Varg when he attempts to rape her and it is the rumours of infidelity that accelerate Franz’s frenzy.

These are spread – weaponised, really – by a doctor and a soldier who could have climbed out of George Grosz’s The Pillars of Society, with its literally shit-headed social elite. Büchner’s satire also gains a hint of Stephen Schwartz’s picaresque Pippin, as Franz is buffeted by grotesquely buffoonish men of war and science.

Michael Oakley’s production of Chris Broderick and Rob Shepherd’s musical, in a new adaptation by Teresa Howard, is staged with a cast of actor-musicians who create an inescapable heartiness that occasionally defuses the stark terror of the original play. But the book and lyrics dovetail nicely and the action is propelled by military cadences and stirring folk songs that are elemental, pungent and often sweetly enchanting.

Brenock O’Connor and Jade Oswald, both well cast as Franz and Marie, balance their respective traumas and tendernesses, O’Connor’s agonised gait and deeply furrowed brow also evoking German expressionism. The show accentuates the play’s folkloric nature, with Matthew Heywood’s wolfish Varg prowling around a forest designed by Bretta Gerecke that is overseen by a wandering elder (Eve Polycarpou). Everyone is busy at work, often weaving, and even the act of boot-shining becomes a percussive flourish.

What you mostly miss is the jagged disorientation of Büchner’s masterpiece as Franz’s downward spiral is interrupted by a needless interval and the faltering comedy of an overstuffed second half. A tragedy that plunges you to the depths has become a musical that instead sweeps you along.