Here is a thrilling theatrical discovery. The plays of Heinrich von Kleist, the 19th century Romantic dramatist who fell more than half in love with death and killed himself in a suicide pact, are almost unknown in England. The Prince of Homburg, given in Neil Bartlett's fervent production and his own eloquent translation, offers an eerie perspective on life. It blurs the boundaries between real and dream worlds until, in the final, dizzying moments, neither we nor the Prince quite know where he is.
This sense of existential mystery engulfs a play whose meaning is shrouded in doubt. The suspenseinducing questions of morality are clear enough. Will the adored Prince be put to death for defying the mighty Elector's battle orders? Is his eagerness to die inappropriate? Hitler and his Nazis thought von Kleist had issued a suitably grim warning to enemies of authority. But the drama works also as an attack upon the abuses of totalitarianism. Bartlett obviously inclines to the second option.
His austere production is played on a bare and barely lit stage. It's without the epic paraphernalia of castle, garden and battlefields to which von Kleist alludes. This unatmospheric, grey-souled approach does pall. But it suits the play's formality and dry Prussian milieu. The first scene sets the disturbing mood. Dan Fredenburgh's intense, young Prince, who looks as if there's a shadow on his soul, sleepwalks and sleep-sits in a moon-lit garden while weaving a wreath. But when the Elector of Brandenberg appears and winds his chain of office through the wreath and Tanya Moodie's shrill, hand-waving Princess Natalie hands it to the young man, the Prince is prompted to speak his unconscious, uninhibited desires for her. On waking he describes this real-life incident as his gorgeously embellished dream.
Von Kleist wrote the play's magical finale, when the Prince serenely awaited execution and the first-scene dream reappears in real life before him, as a sign of redemption. But in Bartlett's version the illuminated, sinister scene suggests the Prince is lost in no-man's-land or nightmare. A fine troupe of actors, particularly James Laurenson's icy, authoritarian Elector and Will Keen's bespectacled automaton who stands up against authority, bring the Prussian military to starched life. Dan Fredenburgh's Prince needs more nervous energy and anguish. But he welcomes death with the right, masochistic fervour.
The Prince Of Homburg
