183 posts
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Post by bee on Jun 11, 2017 11:28:23 GMT
This was a struggle. At first I just found it dull, but I eventually started to get drawn in and by the interval I was thinking it might turn out OK - I thought the final scene before the break with Woyzeck and Marie was tense and nicely acted.
Unfortunately that was as good as it got. Everything just crashed and burned in the second half. A shambles. I thought the ending was pretty well done and might have been genuinely disturbing had I still given a damn but by that point I was just waiting for it to end.
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2,761 posts
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Post by n1david on Jun 11, 2017 16:16:39 GMT
I was there last night and agree very much with bee - it took me a bit of time to warm up during Act One, but thought there was enough to keep me there for second act. I'm guessing the intention in Act 2 was to show how his mind was disintegrating, hence the choppy scenes and fractured narrative. However, I didn't care enough and ended up just wondering how many scenes there were to go before the end. I think Boyega and Greene did a good enough job with the material they were given, but there wasn't enough there to work with other than pain and agony. I wasn't familiar with any other interpretations of Woyzeck before this, and maybe I should have been, but judging from the comments above I'm not sure it would have helped.
A weekend of contrasts given I saw 42nd Street on Friday - both booked before the election. 42nd Street, whilst trivial, was the perfect antidote to the weeks of campaigning (still going on in some way). If I'd seen them the other way around I'm not sure I'd have had much desire to get up on Saturday morning.
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2,702 posts
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Post by viserys on Jun 16, 2017 5:17:58 GMT
Boyega was off yesterday, so I wasn't a very happy camper, but I sat through it anyway, so I can say I've seen Woyzeck once. It is part of the German canon after all and while the first act was okay, the second became oh so German with its oh-so-deep "meaningful" stuff, which poor sods at school would spend hours dissecting. As a German I amused myself with the German bits, especially the long speech by the doctor. The actor's German was really very good. But on the whole it was all very missable indeed. On the bright side, I got upgraded from the cheap £16 pillar seat in the dress circle to a seat smack in thr middle of thr front row of the dress circle, Not bad for that price  |
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Post by Deleted on Jun 16, 2017 5:49:29 GMT
Either you're doing that really kind native speaker thing of 'making allowances', viserys, or D'Silva's had some language coaching since previews...his emphasis seemed all over the place the day I saw it.
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129 posts
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Post by kulen on Jun 16, 2017 20:05:05 GMT
When do you think boyega will be back?
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43 posts
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Post by sayers500 on Jun 17, 2017 17:30:08 GMT
Boyega off this evening as well
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2,702 posts
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Post by viserys on Jun 18, 2017 18:55:41 GMT
Either you're doing that really kind native speaker thing of 'making allowances', viserys, or D'Silva's had some language coaching since previews...his emphasis seemed all over the place the day I saw it. Well, I was more paying attention to the pronouncation since so many English native-speakers can't do the "ch" to save their lives (which is probably how and why they came up with that fairly tasteless and nonsensical "I lick dick" thing as a way of how "Ich liebe dich" gets pronounced as "Ik liebe dick") and I've heard much worse pronouncation from native English speakers on German musical stages. The emphasis was off, but frankly, what the Doctor was going on about didn't make much sense to begin with (at least to me). |
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Post by wiggymess on Jun 21, 2017 22:23:59 GMT
Think I'm pretty much on my own in having enjoyed this (I've skimmed through this thread and get the gist that most didnt like it).
There are plenty of flaws, some bits that really didn't work, my main gripe being his solider friend who was a bizarrely underwritten and underdeveloped character I thought (and Ben Batt really overcompensated, which is a shame as I usually quite like him), but overall I enjoyed this and it completely flew by for me, I couldnt believe an hour had passed either time the curtain came down.
I thought Boyega was excellent and some scenes I found really disturbing and the final scene very powerful.
A lot of mixed responses from the audience as we were filing out, but did receive a fairly healthy ovation.
Thanks once again to theatremonkey for the Q3 tip! Seat great for this!
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