Franz & Marie brings a raw, soul-rattling new folk musical to the Charing Cross Theatre this autumn, reimagining one of the theatre’s most influential tragedies for a company of actor-musicians. Inspired by Georg Buchner’s unfinished nineteenth-century masterpiece Woyzeck, it tells the story of a good man ground down by a world that offers him no way out.
Franz is a soldier stationed at a remote outpost, worn thin by poverty, exhaustion and the hallucinations that follow him home from the front. He does everything he can to provide for Marie and their young child, yet the rules of a rigid, unequal society will not let them marry, and the small cruelties of the men above him slowly push him toward breaking point. Where the original play kept Marie in the shadows, this version pulls her into the light, setting the two lovers side by side at the heart of the tragedy.
Originally commissioned two decades ago by the acclaimed Korean company Acom, the show has been newly adapted for the stage by Teresa Howard, with book and lyrics by Chris Broderick and a live folk score by Rob Shepherd and Chris Broderick. The result is part gig, part fable and part gut-punch: fourteen performers telling a brutal, beautiful story with instruments in their hands and no safety net between them and the audience in one of London’s most atmospheric small theatres.
Why it’s worth the watch
Franz & Marie is a rare chance to see an ambitious new musical up close, in a space that suits its raw, intimate storytelling. Here is why it stands out:
- A landmark story, reimagined. It reinvents Buchner’s Woyzeck, the play that helped shape modern drama, as a live folk musical for a new audience.
- Actor-musicians throughout. A company of fourteen plays the score live on stage, so the band and the storytelling are inseparable.
- Marie at the centre. This adaptation expands and deepens Marie’s story, giving the tragedy two hearts rather than one.
- Intimate and immediate. Staged at the small, atmospheric Charing Cross Theatre, it puts you close enough to feel every moment.
