Picture: Danny Kaan
Franz & Marie continues at the Charing Cross Theatre, London until 14 November 2026.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Franz & Marie is based on Georg Büchner’s 1837 play Woyzeck, with the title taken from the main characters’ first names. It is adapted by Teresa Howard from the raw folk band The Singing Loins’ 2014 musical, with additional music by Steven Edis. Büchner threaded local German folk songs throughout his play, so a folk musical is apt.
When Büchner died at the age of 23, he left behind fragments of Woyzeck, which is considered the forefather of modern theatre and the first realist drama. It is a tragic tale of circumstance, misogyny and the brutality of war on common people.
Franz Woyzeck has regular hallucinations, and his fragile mental health is not helped by the diet of peas he is fed by an experimental military Doctor. A Drum Major sets his cap at Marie; when she repels his advances, he attempts to rape her. On hearing of Marie’s supposed ‘infidelity’, the Doctor gleefully tells Woyzeck “to see how far Woyzeck can be pushed”. Franz murders Marie. This tragedy is based on real-life events from Büchner’s day; even the pea experiment happened.
Designer Bretta Gerecke’s backdrop of a dark forest grows more foreboding with Christopher Nairne’s ominous lighting as the evening progresses. The sounds of the sea lapping on the shore as the audience enters the auditorium place us near a lake.
The 14-strong, multi-talented cast members act, sing and play multiple instruments, including accordion, tin whistle, cello and guitar, giving the show raw, exciting energy. The instruments are mostly acoustic apart from the Hendrix-esque electric guitar in ‘The Shaving Song’. Special mention goes to Antony Lam and his versatile violin playing.
Opening with a bluesy ballad, ‘The Road’, sung by the inimitable, deep-voiced Eve Polycarpou as Vashti, the score moves on to a rousing, drum-rattling chorus of soldiers in ‘To Victory’. Funfair, also sung by Polycarpou, has a pulsating gypsy vibe.
Mark Meadows, playing the Captain, and Richard Emerson Gould as Doctor Simian command the stage physically and vocally with their numbers ‘A Surfeit of Woe’ and ‘Symptom Symposium’. The opening of Act II, ‘The Pub On the Corner ’, led by Matthew Heywood as the Drum Major, has a rollicking Pogues rhythm to it.
As Frank and Marie, Brenock O’Connor and Jade Oswald’s more musical theatre vocal style sometimes jars with the folky accompaniment. O’Connor’s descent into madness is distressing and his final song, ‘The Ruby Necklace’, is full-blooded and passionate. Marie’s character is sanitised from the original and, despite fighting off the Drum Major, is rather bland. Oswald sings her lullaby charmingly but could use more vocal depth and colour elsewhere.
Some of the reimagined text is daft and seems to be rhyming for rhyming’s sake. For example, when Woyzek buys the knife with which he kills Marie, why oh why is there the line ‘This machete killed a yeti’?
Despite the pace lagging a bit in Act I, Michael Oakley’s direction has a strong narrative arc. Franz’s mental health episodes are eerily disturbing, and Marie’s death bizarrely feels both inevitable and shockingly unexpected.
Although it needs some tightening, this folk musical is a disturbing yet toe-stomping night at the theatre.
Effie Gray
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