More importantly it foregrounds the instrumentation as a principal participant. Designer Peter Corrigan uses the bare, tilted acting space as a kind of magic theatre. Two-dimensional flats rise up out of slits in the floor. A series of paranoia-inducing male figures stare down at Wozzeck's increasing sexual panic. A renaissance angel springs across the window of Marie's poor tenement.
Children run across the stage in party hats and stand in for the regimental showing of the colors.
They are humanity's lost innocence and are counter-balanced by gothic demons swallowing human souls. These last Philip Guston-style comic strips seem to me an inadequate expression of the protagonist's mental distortions and suggest an interpretation of the work that gives a false metaphysical slant to Berg's atheistic pessimism. Kosky has taken liberties with the text which, under the right conditions and for coherent motives, should cast new light on a recalcitrant work. So Wozzeck is transformed into a NSW constable and his commanding officer into a sergeant. While attempting a contemporary relevance, this takes the edge off Berg's emphasis, based on his own experiences, of the brutalisation of the military life.