Woyzeck

Woyzeck is about a soldier and regimental barber stationed in a provincial town. He is desperately poor, with a common law wife and a child born out of wedlock to support. He supplements his income by performing menial tasks for his Captain and by participating as a subject in medical experiments, subjecting him to malnutrition and an agitated mental state.

Woyzeck adores his beautiful, sensuous wife, Marie. Unfortunately, so does every man who sets eyes on her. Ground down by poverty, she succumbs to the charms of a handsome drum major who seduces her with the offer of a pair of shiny earrings.

Stricken with guilt and remorse, she prays for her husband Franz to come home, so she can love him properly and assuage her own loneliness. But Franz Woyzeck has been manipulated by his vicious acquaintances,. In his already debilitated state, he is driven mad with jealousy and a lust for revenge, propelling the narrative to a bloody conclusion.

The original Woyzeck was loosely based on a real, sensational murder case involving soldier Johann Woyzeck and his mistress Christine Woost in Germany in 1821.