'Woyzeck' shines through shame, dirt and grime

Somewhere between the dirt and grime that enshrouds society's bottom crust and the occupants of the rungs above them, one finds the roots of social theater like German playwright Georg Buchner's 1836 unfinished drama "Woyzeck," currently playing in a powerful realization at Ula Love Doughty Carousel Theatre at the University of Tennessee in a new translation by Stefanie Ohnesorg and Noah Soltau.

It isn't theater one goes to see as an evening of breezy diversion, which "Woyzeck" is far from, but because one should witness theater's power to land a blow, not to mention witnessing the work of a gifted theatrical team.

Based on the true story of Johann Christian Woyzeck, a lowly wigmaker and soldier who, in a fit of jealousy, murders the woman with whom he has been having an affair, Buchner's Woyzeck is trapped in the web of a delusional social Mandlebrot set that is only partly of his own grafting.

Relegated to an insane asylum, Woyzeck is tormented by both his disturbed visions and the doctor who makes him his personal lab rat.

Humiliated by seeing Marie, his lover with whom he has a child, take up with a soldier who rapes her, Woyzeck ignominiously kills her. But, as the sergeant points out, people of the lowest classes aren't capable of morals anyway.

Brilliantly shaped by director John Sipes, whose conception of an ending to Buchner's unfinished theatrical journey is more than worth one's time and cost of admission, there is not a false step in the entire production.

Set on Christopher Pickart's starkly brutal, linear stage that becomes a kind of character in the play, the social structure of "Woyzseck" is sharply delineated by costume designer Marianne Custer's frank demarcation of dirt-drab clothing for Woyzseck and the rest of the underclass, while those on the ruling rungs above them appear in full color.

There is also the psychiatric doctor whom Custer turns into a visual cross between a demented Mr. Goodwrench, Dr. Frankenstein and Josef Mengele.

As Woyzeck, Jed Diamond' shines. Although, his supporting cast, almost all of whom play more than one role, provides excellent context.

Providing connective tissue by executing Sipes' decision to add music to what otherwise would have been an intellectually exhilarating, but depressing, experience, Katy Wolfe Zahn's narrative songs sound almost as if they were written by Kurt Weill in the confines of a mortuary basement.

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

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