GEORG BUCHNER, the 19thcentury ingenue and Renaissance man, was dead before his 24th birthday. His unfinished but extraordinarily prescient Woyzeck, as patently a socialist piece of agitprop theatre in its origins as you'll find, was intended as a delivery system for philosophical ideas . . . extolled here with marked visual reference to abject cruelty, misogyny and the "human as an abyss" . . . that characterised his idealistically bleak world view.

But it's no surprise that the redoubtable and exciting Corcadorca theatre company (for their Cork Midsummer Festival highpoint) here reinvigorate Buchner's oddly comedic pre-expressionist, preexistentialism to an audience of 300 souls on opening night at the most breathtaking location since the company was formed in 1991.

The company's promenade performance at Haulbowline Naval Base, which runs until 1 July, was outstandingly premiered beneath a scowling sky that mercifully didn't break between 10pm and performance end at 11.40pm. Had it done so as we followed, at quick step, the vibrant commedia dell'arteinflected action across no fewer than seven separate locations in these magnificent surroundings, we would have surely reasoned that we were in sympathy with the misery dumped upon Franz Woyzeck and his sometime lover, the mother of his son, Marie.

Woyzeck is introduced as an impoverished Able Seaman First Class who has to perform myriad and menial tasks for a delusional and viscerally presumptuous Naval Doctor and a landlocked Ship's Captain who obsesses about the "decent man" as a kind of mantra throughout. This viscerally, at times voyeuristically, violent play . . .

based on the true story of a soldier murdering his lover, a crime for which he is beheaded . . .

oozed and projected the elan of high art and the meat of memorable theatre across the theatrical, technical, emotional and textual aspects.

The performances throughout were superb and the soundtrack by Mel Mercier . . . nightclub rumbas allied to strutting vamps with beats, walking basslines and bleak and circular synthesised guitar washes . . . perfectly complemented the rising sensation that the modern life of 1836 is no less desperate than life in 2007 when you're poor and disrespected.

David Pearce as Woyzeck, Lucianne McEvoy as the impoverished and vital flamehaired Marie, Rory Nolan as the elementally metallic Drum Major who flatters Marie, Frank O'Sullivan as the Captain, Malcolm Adams as the Doctor, Anthony Morris as the likeably earthed Andres and the accomplished Gina Moxley as the cruel Showman are all excellent.

Woyzeck is driven mad through his capacity for analysing everything, by his poverty and by the insistence of the Doctor that he eat nothing but peas for months on end in order to facilitate his wasteful "piss prophet" experiments. In the end Woyzeck murders his true love Marie despite himself but he is no less deranged a killer than he is a tortured and riven soul who lays claim to the sympathy and compassion of the peripatetic audience.

Theatre once again is beautifully served by Corcadorca but it's quite hard to see how they'll top this extraordinary achievement.