"Picture a tavern scene: two dozen chorus members cavort alongside a handful of actors, several in gas masks, moving along in broken, limping gait, lifting and shaking wooden chairs. Backstage a screen is projecting speeded-up clips of a woman being thrown from one man’s arms to another one’s lap. From a wooden wardrobe emerges a group of pub musicians. Two singers appear from behind them, singing distorted popular songs then drunkenly collapsing; two more (Wozzeck’s mistress Marie and her seducer, the Drum Major) enter dancing and swirling as Wozzeck himself looks on in outrage and despair. The backdrop presents dense charcoal drawings and video projections.
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Trying to take all of this in, the eye frantically glances to and from the surtitles. And the music? On the one hand you could argue that it invites the disorienting visual barrage. On the other, you could say that it makes much of that barrage superfluous, if not infuriating."

[Continue at Ludwig Van]