Seven years ago, Sarah Kane directed a flawless production of Georg Büchner's 1837 theatrical landmark at this address. While Daniel Kramer's radical new version is bold, striking and necessary viewing, it pushes the play too far towards expressionism for my taste.
One could argue for ever about the precise nature of the 25 scenes that make up this bleeding torso of a play. It seems to me at heart a naturalistic tragedy. Büchner's hero is a bullied, browbeaten, impoverished army barber who is forced to work as a scientific guinea pig to support his common-law wife, Marie, and their child. Weakened by three months of eating nothing but peas, Woyzeck is driven into a jealous frenzy by Marie's liaison with a cocksure drum major; he finally murders her. Basing his play closely on a well-documented case, Büchner is clearly suggesting that man's fate is dictated by economic circumstance and that proletarian heroes are suitable subjects for tragedy.
Kramer uses any number of devices to ram home Woyzeck's predicament - some good, some less so. I liked the use of a spotlit clock and alarm bell to convey the hero's regimented existence. Kramer also brilliantly evokes the eerie strangeness of the fairground to which Woyzeck and Marie resort: a nightmare wonderland of tattered curtains, birdcages, prancing horses and capering dwarves. But making the hero's mode of conveyance a child's tricycle is, all too literally, belittling, and the musical mix of Beethoven and Elvis crudely signifies the play's capacity to straddle the centuries.
What comes across is the hunted, haunted nature of Woyzeck's existence, thanks to Edward Hogg's attenuated desperation in the title role. Myriam Acharki's Marie, Tim Chipping's strutting drum major and Tony Guilfoyle's doctor, unexpectedly turning up in drag in the tavern, have an equally strong outline. And Neil Irish's design pulls off a dazzling coup to create the woodland pool in which Woyzeck finally drowns.
The production certainly offers a striking calling-card for Kramer, following his version of Kroetz's Through the Leaves. Whether all its ideas - such as the revelation that Marie's swaddling clothes contain nothing but dust and ashes - actually enhance Büchner's play is more open to debate.
· Until December 4. Box office: 020-7229 0706.
