Bay 17, Carriageworks
January 7, 2016

Australia is extremely fortunate to have many superb international arts festivals. For a country so relatively remote, they are a lightning rod, drawing productions and performers from all over the world that connect us to a global canon of creative wealth. They also illuminate the arts’ uncanny ability to transcend language and nationality by communicating on an ineffable, universally human level. Yet sometimes these powerfully innate qualities succumb to unyielding cultural barriers, and the 2016 Sydney Festival’s headline show, Thalia Theater Hamburg’s Woyzeck, is a prime example of this.

Now 16 years old, this collaboration between director/designer Robert Wilson, lyricist Kathleen Brennan and American music legend Tom Waits is a pointedly esoteric retelling of Georg Büchner’s bleak tale of obsession and infidelity. Woyzeck, the disenfranchised and socially isolated soldier, is driven mad with jealousy upon discovering that he has been betrayed by the woman he loves. It is only after he enacts his murderous revenge that he understands the one object of hope in his otherwise barren world has been lost.

The narrative is unpacked into twelve episodes that slither seamlessly together as the actors scramble over a vast suspended net that pivots and tilts above...