The Jewish Chronicle
Review: Prince of Homburg
A 19th-century preview of Hitler’s Germany
July 29, 2010 11:24
A 19th-century preview of Hitler’s Germany
July 29, 2010 11:24In Hans Fallada’s brilliant novel, Alone in Berlin, about life for ordinary Germans under the Nazis, there is a memorable digression about Henrich von Kleist’s 1811 play, The Prince of Homburg. According to Fallada, any actor who played the title role of the play, which Kleist finished shortly before his suicide at the age of 34, risked the attention of the Gestapo.
The Prince is a war hero who, when threatened with execution for winning the war by disobeying an order, begs for his life. He is described with irony by the Nazi-hating Fallada as, “a despicable weakling who every red-blooded National Socialist could only spit at”.
In this revival of Kleist’s masterpiece, given a new translation by Dennis Kelly, plus a new ending as well, Jonathan Munby’s hurtling production hints at the extremist Germany that evolved out of its Prussian forebear, but without over-emphasising the point.
Charlie Cox is the Prince who is in a mysterious dream-like state when he falls for Natalia (Sonya Cassidy), the niece of the country’s leader, the Elector. He is so distracted by his new-found love, he fails to note the Elector’s military commands for defeating the Swedes. So he charges sooner than ordered, and though he wins the war, he loses the faith of his Führer.
It is when the Prince is sentenced to death that the play turns from a soppy love story into an almost surreal examination of orders for order’s sake.
Cox’s Prince is frankly annoying when merely besotted. But at the news of his fate, the transformation from arrogance to carpet-chewing hysteria, via incredulity — at one point he repeats the words “death sentence” with mock horror — is fascinating.
Yet nothing could overshadow Ian McDiarmid’s Elector, who easily steals the show, first with reasoned argument - “I don’t like victory by chance,” he declares, “I want rules and order” — and then with a Lear-like logic that punishes the most praiseworthy. It is a mesmerising performance adorned with an unexpected twig-dry sarcasm.
Just as surprising are the moments when court etiquette is breached — for example when, with great import, a courtier warns the Elector of mutiny, and then has to confess to his leader that the source of his unimpeachable intelligence is his wife’s cousin.
And there is a fantastically unseemly scene when the Prince drops all chivalry and barks his desperate pleas at Siobhan Redmond’s aloof Electress.
Cassidy too, is forced to drop her coyness for a much more interesting cunning. What fun watching puffed-up royalty morph into human beings. And I would love to see McDiarmid’s Lear.
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