Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...Stylization sometimes trumps text here, though David Steiger's muscular translation contains such truncheon-like observations as "Why would someone get excited over a single human life?" By surrendering to the nightmarish world Truax evokes (with fine assists from Eric Van Tassell's noirish lighting and Leon Rothenberg's disorienting soundscape), one discovers layers and depths to Buchner's story not seen before."
Chicago Reader
- Somewhat Recommended
"...The show is an 85-minute visual feast, but the script's nuanced psychological truths are flattened under Truax's unrelenting, ultimately exhausting stylization."
Centerstage
- Recommended
"...Oracle Theater has mounted a beautiful, poetic production of Büchner’s work, directed by Max Truax and choreographed by Lyndsay Rose Kane. The story unfolds like a strange dream: as we follow Woyzeck from the Captain’s quarters to the barracks to Marie’s home, we are never sure how much of what we see and hear comes from external reality, and how much from his troubled mind. The tilted, split-level stage adds to the atmosphere of unreality while flickering images on the back wall suggest the contents of Woyzeck’s imagination."
Time Out Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"... It is a haunting and visually captivating moment of composition. “Everyone is an abyss; if you look down far enough you get dizzy,” Woyzeck tells Marie. Truax’s portrait of this iconic play is both dizzying and illuminating; one feels privileged to look down."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Somewhat Recommended
"...“Woyzeck” does produce a tolerable cast however at many points throughout the show present difficulties expressing the clinically insane aspects of their characters. The entire show is a ninety minute, bittersweet production that audiences can go either way on. While I have no taste for structurally unstable plays that present a very thin storyline, that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it as well. I just don’t believe that turning the lights down, adding a red tint to the stage, and throwing in some creepy music gives a play the right to be called a thriller."
Chicago Theater Beat
- Highly Recommended
"...Woyzeck, now onstage at Oracle Theatre, is not just a searing, bold display of German expressionism, it’s also a unique theatrical experience of uncompromising vision, daring and macabre power. Georg Buchner’s unfinished 1837 tragedy about a working class soldier faced with insurmountable oppression, madness and betrayal has seen several revisions, including Werner Herzog’s film of the same name. David Steiger’s translation utilizes direct, clear poetry in expressing Woyzeck’s (Sean Patrick Ward) terrifying schizophrenic state. But is it the multiple elements pulled together by Max Truax’s direction that carry the day—or, rather, the unrelenting night–from which Woyzeck cannot escape."
