Review: Lyric's WOZZECK Stirs the Brain in Cracking Production

Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck is not the first to swirl with immortal themes like power play, lust, betrayal, and death (far, far from it), but thanks to the circumstances of its composition - further emphasized by Sir David McVicar's new production at the Lyric Opera - it is prominent in its search to question the meaning of it all. So, whether or not philosophizing about the inherent nature of man gets you up and out in the morning, a visit to the Civic Opera House would very much be in order for a beguiling production that, while leaving one starved for melody, makes for cracking drama and discussion.

Adapted from Georg Büchner's Woyzeck - a play left fragmented and unfinished upon his death- it is starved of order and sense not just because of Büchner's unexpected death, but also because Büchner would not make moral commentary about the sad, crooked tale of the impoverished soldier Woyzeck: Berated by his superiors; heckled for his illegitimate arrangement with the woman and child he provides for; poked and prodded by a sadistic doctor; and cuckolded by a brash drum major; and so, he lashes out at the cruelties of his life. Whether tragedy ensues - whether Woyzeck is a good man done wrong, a bad man done worse, what have you - depends on one's general disposition toward life, which was rather cloudy in Büchner's sturm und drang Germany and then blisteringly cynical in Berg's post-WWI Austria. Berg, having witnessed such horrors as a soldier from the trenches himself, used the strange and atonal music of his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, in service of his adaptation, the lack of order and sense found in tonal music paralleling Büchner's lack of moral center.

Pairing such unresolving music with what is perhaps the least likely libretto ever penned (instead of full-throated arias about love, we get sprechstimme about a hypothetical impending stroke, for instance) seems uninviting, as does the lack of intermission. (The production runs one hundred minutes.) And not one of those minutes brings anyone any closer to a great catharsis. Neither drink nor sex nor faith can soothe the depths of man's suffering. Not even the climactic murder can approach bringing down any justice. Instead, it's brutally anticlimactic for an art form that has made much ado about bringing down the final curtain. But perhaps the greatest tragedy of the evening is that Wozzeck's fate doesn't register with those who did their damndest to keep him underfoot.

Is there a lesson to glean here, or is it really just one hundred minutes of futility? Enter McVicar's production, placing the action somewhere between the shell-shocked end of the war and the go-to-hell decadence of the Weimar Republic, dominated by a bronze obelisk for the unknown soldiers, an elegant and sleek monument standing in the middle of a greyed-out, bombed-out hellscape, lit in unforgiving sickly pale light (by Paule Constable).

A perfect stage for our third player: Bertolt Brecht, whose influence is keenly felt not merely in the ragtag chorus of observers and the obvious theatricality of it all (sweeping canvas curtains separate scenes, and the back wall of the Lyric stage is visible), but in how the lack of moral commentary on Wozzeck's actions is not a removal, but rather a displacement. It is instead placed squarely on the shoulders of Wozzeck's superiors, who seem to prove that morality is a luxury they can afford to toy with at others' expense. Through this prism, Wozzeck, despite his actions, emerges as a sympathetic Everyman figure, especially as rendered by Tomasz Konieczny in his Lyric debut - meek and submissive at first, but this bass-baritone is boiling over ere long until violence is the only sensible reaction.

Debuts all around:. Those joining Konieczny on the Lyric stage for the first time include soprano Angela Denoke as Marie, a woman who gets caught between her lover's increasing madness and a drum major's advances, and wholly embraces the odd beauty in lines like "Your sad bastard face means the world to me." Said drum major, Stefan Vinke, is as brash and brutish as the captain, Gerhard Siegel, is otiose.

Though perhaps the most interesting figure is the doctor, played by Brindley Sherratt. His mere presence is a reminder that all is flesh and bone. And all the rank and privilege in the world can't stop nature, knowledge he doesn't hesitate to flaunt, especially to those who outrank him.

The other Sir, Andrew Davis, works in lock-step with McVicar and keeps Berg's harshly angular score churning while also managing to, again, find the odd beauty buried within what, on first impression, sounds like the machinations of Hell. Berg's music and message (and Büchner's) may not be heavenly, but no, it's not hellish, either. It belongs to this earth, in all its unorderly (precisely orderly?) glory, with equal potential to be beautiful or ugly. All to say, Lyric's Wozzeck is well-worth the listen.

Wozzeck continues through Nov. 21 at the Civic Opera House, 20 N. Wacker Drive. Tickets range from $34-$239. To purchase tickets, call (312) 827-5600, or visit www.lyricopera.org.

Photo credit: Cory Weaver

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