‘A rollercoaster journey from the heights of black comedy to the depths of Freudian despair.’
With the challenge of picking only one show, I shall stick with the first one I saw as a full preview performance on 2nd January and which, rarely for me, I returned to see again when it played at Hope Street Theatre in Liverpool in the last week of January. Step forward Old Fruit Jar Productions and their debut production, a take on Jack Thorne’s 2017 adaptation of Georg Büchner’s classic play, Woyzeck, with this its first performance since its inaugural West End run by kind permission of the writer himself.
![](https://i0.wp.com/northwestend.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Woyzeck_2020_Review.jpg?resize=650%2C443&ssl=1)
It was a delight to see this new young company grabbing the opportunity to do something different and tackle real issues – class divide; poverty; exploitation; mental health – that were sadly to become all too prevalent as 2020 itself unravelled, with a performance that made me laugh out loud so much that I cried one minute before the action turned and my tears became all too real, at a venue that was imagined with exactly this type of ground-breaking performance in mind.
Hats off to director Alex Carr and the cast from Old Fruit Jar Productions – Jordan Barkley; Josh Ennis; Florence King; Rachel McGrath; Jamie Peacock; Anthony Roberts; Christina Rose – who collectively make up this company. I look forward to what 2021 brings for them and for us.
Read Mark Davoren’s preview here https://tinyurl.com/ycy8bch7