Butterflies fails to take off

Claire Allfree|Metro10 April 2012

More than 125 years after it was written, Georg Buchner's expressionist drama Woyzeck still exercises a dark grip on the imagination.

It's not hard to see why: the descent of the soldier Woyzeck into a paranoid nightmare of his own fantasies becomes a metaphor for the brutalising effect of war.

At least that's the approach Sean Burn takes in his new play, which acknowledges its debt to Buchner: a story of a UN peacekeeping force in an unnamed war zone where soldier Zek, a religious fanatic obsessed with a local woman, takes Woyzeckian revenge when he sees another soldier abusing her.

Unfortunately, for 80 exceedingly long minutes, Burn's densely poetic play never takes off.

Burn invokes almost every war cliche in the book, be it the pig ignorant colonel who terrorises his men and rapes the woman he's supposed to be protecting, or his melodramatic use of symbolism in the mother's mute daughter, who ripped out her own tongue at the age of nine - in horror at a world torn apart by endless war? (Who knows?).

Burn is on to something trying to show the consequences of ceaseless conflict: the soldiers have lost sight of their objective; the mother and her daughter don't even consider that they live in a country any more, so worn down is their land by occupation.

Yet Zek never works as a take on Woyzeck - he's simply too mad, for one thing; and despite some decent performances, Vanessa Mobiglia's lethargic production drags its feet.

Until Nov 11, Oval House, 52-54 Kennington Oval SE11, Tue to Sat 7.45pm, Wed mats 1.30pm, £12, £6 concs. Tel: 020 7582 7680. www.ovalhouse.com Tube: Oval

Taking The Blood Of Butterflies
Oval House Theatre
Kennington Oval, Kennington, SE11 5SW

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