Cultivating the unexpected

The Robert Wilson version of Georg Buchner’s “Woyzeck,” with music by Tom Waits, is an astonishing show. Wilson’s vision, his painterly use of light and meticulous cultivation of the unexpected are unlike anything ever before seen on a Los Angeles stage. And that is because, with the arrival Tuesday night of “Woyzeck” at the Freud Playhouse, UCLA, Los Angeles has, at very long last, broken its Robert Wilson curse.

It’s been almost 20 years since the first plans were made for Wilson to create a 12-hour opera, “the CIVIL warS,” with German playwright Heiner Muller and various composers, as the centerpiece of the Los Angeles Olympic Arts Festival in 1984. Different segments were produced around the world but, after losing an Olympic-size funding marathon, Wilson never got to assemble one of the most venturesome opera projects of our time. UCLA’s commission of a Glass-Wilson work, “Monsters of Grace,” in 1999 got sidetracked into a disappointing digital 3D film.

But with the import of “Woyzeck” -- created for the Betty Nansen Theatre in Copenhagen two years ago and brought to UCLA as the culmination of its first International Theatre Festival -- a new, if eccentric, day has dawned for Los Angeles theater.

Left unfinished by Buchner, a German medical student and political agitator who died at age 23 in 1837, “Woyzeck” is the story of a simple soldier oppressed by his superiors, abused by medical science and driven to kill his mistress in a fit of jealousy. The play’s fragments haunted 20th century German theater and became the subject of Alban Berg’s opera, “Wozzeck.”

The Wilson-Waits “Woyzeck” is black cabaret shot through with breathtakingly lurid color. Wilson’s theater of images transcends language. When he stages classic and contemporary plays and operas, he always illustrates them as pure fantasy. He cares nothing for psychology or character motivation. Instead, he likes to see what happens when he lets his consciousness stream, and then, in what might seem an impossible contradiction, he controls with cool, precise, minimalist movement, gesture and design. It’s a big deal when characters touch, and quite rare.

The collaboration of Wilson and Waits -- who also worked together on “The Black Rider” and “Alice” -- is the shock of cold and hot. Waits’ music, written in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Brennen, is gleeful mockery of angst, with simple but deformed tunes, impaled oom-pah-pah accompaniments and deliciously mean lyrics.

“Woyzeck” begins with carnival-esque satire. Wilson loves giants and dwarfs. A yellow barker on stilts (Troels Il Munk) and a small mechanical monkey are the extremes. The backdrop is a riotous splay of color. The cast, a merry chorus line from hell, sings, “Misery’s the river of the world.”

Using an adaptation by Wolfgang Wiens and Ann-Christin Rommen, Wilson sticks fairly close to the Buchner scenes he chooses, but his focus is always offbeat. The Captain (Ole Thestrup) is a loony hysteric. The Doctor who regularly humiliates Woyzeck becomes purple, cackling Siamese twins (Morten Eisner and Marianne Mortensen). Woyzeck’s mistress, Marie (Kay Bruel), might have walked out of a roaring ‘20s German cabaret on another planet. Her lover, the Drum Major (Tom Jensen), high-steps in his red leather tails with a devil’s tale. Woyzeck’s friend Andres (Morten Lutzheoft) is goofy.

Jacques Reynaud designed the delightfully outrageous costumes.

Woyzeck (Jens Jorn Spottag) appears almost normal, despite such tics as his mad running in place. Nothing is what it seems, most of all madness. Waits’ twisted songs are variations on that contradictory idea, as is Wilson’s spectacular ability to affect our emotions through the use of light. Collaborating with lighting designer A.J. Weissbard, he turns characters suddenly red or green, disembodies a blood-red or silver hand. Backgrounds are infused in arresting colors that invade a spectator’s psyche.

The Danish actors -- Lotte Andersen (Margret), Benjamin Boe Rasmussen (Karl) and children Jeppe Dahl Rordam and Morten Thorup Koudal are also in the cast -- are exceptional in their assumption of Wilsonian grotesqueries or singing with Waitsian raspiness; their English is just fine. A six-member theater band, led by Bent Clausen, shows continual imagination.

Leaving the theater, an arts patron close to Wilson commented that nobody, but nobody, knows where Wilson’s ideas come from, least of all Wilson himself. By passing reason, he makes singular theater out of whatever it is that is floating through his head.

*

‘Woyzeck’

Where: Freud Playhouse, UCLA

When: Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.

Ends: Dec. 15

Price: $70; UCLA students with ID, $20

Info: (310) 825-2101

Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes