 |
| Kenneth V. Lowry, Juliene Marshall, Curt Karibalis. |
WOYZECK [Dramatic
Revival] A: Georg Büchner; TR: Henry I. Schmidt; D: Robert Weinstein; S: Bob
Olson; C: Daniel Michaelson; L: Jon Brittain; P: Robert Weinstein i/a/w Two
Arts Playhouse; T: Fortune Theatre (OB); 5/25/71-5/30/71 (8)
German playwright Büchner’s
1836 proto-expressionist drama was given an unimaginative, poorly conceived
staging by a young acting company, the Actors’ Group. Mel Gussow commented
that “Almost everything is too representational—and dispassionate” for so
highly charged a work. Further, “the acting lacks conviction and penetration.”
Martin Washburn concurred: “the many scenes . . . hung in floppy
disassociation” and the cast seemed unconnected to the play.”
This was the play’s
first English presentation. A German one had been shown in 1966. More would
bcome in the following years, including the following German example. Cast
members were Curt Karibalis, Kenneth W. Lowry, Julienne Marshall, and Dorin
McGough.
 |
| Wolfgang Reinbacher, Dieter Brammer. (Photo: Hilde Zemann.) |
2.
D: Hans Joachim
Heyse; S/C: Christian Bussman; M: Dieter Shönbach; P: Goethe Institute of
Munich and the Gert von Gontard Foundation; T: Barbizon-Plaza Theatre (OB); 12/5/72-12/10/72
(7)
Die Brūcke (The
Bridge), a traveling German troupe that appeared periodically in New York in
the late 60s and early 70s, offered this revival in the play’s native language.
A.H. Weiler thought the production “fairly cheerless” in its depiction of
Büchner’s unfinished tragicomedy. He was, however, held by its “spellbinding” effect.
Wolfgang Reinbacher’s
much-put-upon Woyzeck was “not so much a fool as a simple man confused and
misused by the people around him.” There were strong performances by Dieter
Brammer as the Captain and Gerhard Friedrich as the Doctor. The “workmanlike”
production’s setting was simple, and changed for each of the 26 scenes by the
actors themselves.
Do you enjoy Theatre’s Leiter Side? As you may know,
since New York’s theatres were forced into hibernation by Covid-19, this blog
has provided daily posts on the hundreds of shows that opened in the city, Off
and on Broadway, between 1970 and 1975. These have been drawn from an
unpublished manuscript that would have been part of my multivolume Encyclopedia of
the New York Stage series,
which covers every show, of every type, from 1920 through 1950. Unfortunately,
the publisher, Greenwood Press, decided it was too expensive to continue the
project beyond 1950.
Before I began offering these 1970-1975 entries, however, Theatre’s
Leiter Side posted over 1,600 of my actual reviews for shows from 2012
through 2020. The first two years of that experience were published in separate
volumes for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 (the latter split into two volumes). The
2012-2013 edition also includes a memoir in which I describe how, when I was
72, I used the opportunity of suddenly being granted free access to every New
York show to begin writing reviews of everything I saw. Interested readers can
find these collections on Amazon.com by
clicking here.
Next up: The Year of the Dragon.
