Woyzeck, Barbican, London

Georg Büchner's play Woyzeck, which was written more than 160 years ago is, with its short, intense scenes and its emphasis on social rather than individual responsibility, a play far ahead of its time. Robert Wilson, who directed, designed and lit this production, is very much of our own. Some may not consider this a match made in heaven.

Wilson was attracted to Woyzeck, he says, because "you don't get involved with unnecessary things like psychology". But does this strip man to his essence, or provide an excuse for ignoring it? He also says that the most important thing about the theatre is to "connect with the public", and indeed the audience was in raptures – unless it was just Danish and patriotic (Woyzeck comes from the Betty Nansen Theatre of Copenhagen). But this seemed to me a production designed to keep the audience at bay.

Visually, there's plenty of excitement, with rich, saturated colours used for backdrops and for costumes. Woyzeck, the simple-minded soldier, wears white, a sort of fencer's suit dyed in various brilliant hues by coloured lights. His faithless common-law wife, Marie, wears a strapless red dress with a jagged hem, and her drum-major lover a red suit whose tailcoat – not the subtlest of touches – comes to a single point. The characters are introduced by a carnival barker who towers, on stilts, over the others, in a lime-green suit and matching hair.

The production obviously owes a heavy debt to the raucous despair of Germany in the 1920s, with its life-is-a-circus theme (in the sense that we are all caged, performing animals) and the Brechtian idea that alienation is good.

The Danish actors' English is splendid, their enunciation better than that of many native speakers, but their delivery is robotic, their acting simply a series of poses against the acid-hued backgrounds. Woyzeck spends a lot of time running in place, and the dialogue often erupts into screaming or dog noises. Call me old-fashioned, but it seems a funny way to relate a tale of adultery and murder.

As Kurt Weill did a lot to cheer up Brecht, however, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's songs contribute the emotional colour lacking in the play. Their work isn't on the same level as that of Weill, or even Bob Dylan, whose songs their creaky melodies recall, and though the slow tempi and wonky rhythms blur this, their tunes can be, shall we say, derivative – I could have sworn that the first one I heard was the old standard "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain".

Nevertheless, the songs have a bite and a sly wit that makes one want to hear them in cabaret or in a different setting, among them "Misery's the River of the World" and "Everything Goes to Hell" – Marie sings that she doesn't trust "A woman when she weeps/ A merchant when he swears/ A thief who says he'll pay/ A lawyer when he cares."

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