Daniel Sutin- Wozzeck
William Ferguson- Andres
Marjorie Elinor Dix– Marie
Alexis Barthelemy – Margret
Dale Travis– The Doctor
Jason Collins– The Drum Major
Mark Schokey – The Idiot
Lawrence Reppert – A Soldier
Robert Pomokov – First Artisan
Keith Phares – Second Artisan
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Wozzeck
[...] The production, by Wim Trompert, a Dutch director, started out feeling frantic, caricaturing all of the figures in its bleak and black Expressionistic interpretation so that even Wozzeck and Marie, the complex protagonists, tended toward two-dimensionality. But it hung on and continued to develop its themes - from sinister Futurist smokestacks and Otto Dix-like grotesqueries in the orgy of the second act to overtones of Edward Munch in the birch-tree lakeside of the third - with a conviction that ultimately became compelling.
Anne Midgette
In The New York Times
July 10, 2003
photo: Coby Weaver
19-century tale of insanity
'The Opera Festival of New Jersey's "Wozzeck" is wonderful - grim, sometimes lurid, but never less than compelling.
[...] The Opera Festival production, directed by Wim Trompert and designed by Leslie Frankish (sets and costumes) and Helena Kuukka (lights), takes an appropriately minimalist approach, with situalized stage action and a single setting that presents Wozzeck's cramped, circumscribed world.
A tall mill wheel, turning slowly, echoes the arch of sky revealed by an opening in the black backdrop. It's a wheel to grind humanity down and one on which to break a man. In front of the sky lies an expanse of water and then the dry ground on which most of the action transpires.
Peter Wynne for the Star-Ledger, July 10, 2003.
Marjorie Elinor Dix
as Marie and --
as her child
photo: Coby Weaver
Opera Festival takes a bold risk with production of Berg's "Wozzeck'
[...] The audience for last Thursday night's opening night was not so much shaken up as mesmerized by the minimalistic yet dramatic production, presented as a 90-minute unintermissioned opera.
[...] Director Wim Trompert created a great deal of angular direction with the principal singers, adding to the rage and anger felt by some of these characters
Nancy Plum in
Town Topics
July 16, 2003
Keith Phares as Second Artisan
photo: Coby Waever
Wozzeck's nuanced parable of inhumanity was delivered with such urgency by Opera Festival of New Jersey that you couldn't mind when surface details weren't quite right in this story of a soldier driven mad by scientific experiments and all-around degradation. Even when the vocal lines were rendered less than accurately (and the set, influenced by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, was too pretty to be manacing), dramatic intent was blindingly clear
David Patrick Stearns
in Cool ideas for culture lovers
on: www.tortwayne.com
August 3-2003
William Ferguson as Andres
photo: David Cooper
Director: Wim Trompert
Set designer: Leslie Frankish
Costumes: Leslie Frankish
Lighting: Helen Kuuka
Alban Berg: Wozzeck
Opera Festival of New Jersey