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The Prince of Homburg

The Space

Reviewed – 12th December 2019

★★★★

“The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception”

Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg, written around 1810, is a play shot through with ambiguity and altered states. It was also seen, at the time of its creation, as a direct challenge to the authority of the ruling classes. Now recognized as one of the masterpieces of German theatre, the play is rarely seen on British stages, and not just because of the difficulty of rendering this work into English. Neil Bartlett’s translation, however, does a fine job of capturing Kleist’s unique energy of expression and style. So what The Prince of Homburg is actually about? In many ways, the play is essentially unknowable. But on the face of it, it is a story about a soldier whose response, after being tricked into a waking dream where he is crowned with a wreath of victory, is to promptly go into battle, disobey his orders, and—win a great victory for his side.

After the battle (often the end of the story in a more conventional play) is where this drama really begins. Kleist sets the audience an intriguing puzzle: since the Prince did not know whether he was awake or dreaming when he was crowned with the victor’s wreath, can he be held responsible for disobeying orders to achieve the dream? Is his commanding officer, the Elector, really to blame, since it was he who set up the whole scene for his own amusement? This enlightened despot disingenuously argues that he must follow the law when the courts sentence Homburg to death, but then the officers in his army rebel. When the Princess Natalie, who has fallen in love with Homburg, makes an impassioned plea for her lover’s life—it is not her emotions that carry weight with the Elector, but her cleverly nuanced argument that he will look bad if he allows a man of honour to be executed for following his heart. At this point the Elector caves of course, but sets up a poison pill for Homburg. The Prince must now decide whether to make the expedient argument to save his life, or do what a man of honour would do, which is to sacrifice himself willingly for his country.

Kleist pulls off a remarkable sleight of hand with this material, managing all these reversals of fortune in a way that undercuts expectations, while paradoxically heightening the audience’s experience through the dramatization of highly ambiguous dream states. In these states, the characters confront all the big stuff like life and love; death and immortality. Coupled with crafting a language uniquely suited to these dramatic innovations, Kleist engages the our imaginations, and our sense of what is possible in the theatre. The Prince of Homburg is like Hamlet in this regard, in that the more we engage with it, the greater it becomes.

Júlia Leval, freely adapting and directing this production of The Prince of Homburg, has come up with some innovative ideas for casting and staging. The Prince is played by Lucy Mackay, a fine actress, but lacking the experience for such a difficult role. Most of the cast (recently graduated from LAMDA) also seems rather adrift in the stormy waters of Kleist’s rhetoric, though Will Bishop is a confident Elector. A pared down set designed by Zoe Brennan has some beautifully ironic touches—a small bush for the laurel tree that Homburg uses to build the wreath for example, and a small white house that stands in for palaces and churches as well as a throne. Alistair Lax’s sound design helps to heighten the dream sequences.

Don’t miss your chance to see this seldom performed masterpiece. It’s worth making the journey to The Isle of Dogs to see it, and The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

The Prince of Homburg

The Space until 14th December

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

Chekhov In Moscow | ★★★★ | August 2019

The Open | ★★★ | September 2019

Between Two Waves | ★★★ | October 2019

Click here to see our most recent reviews

★★

“with a small cluster of 80s stereotypes and a feverish stream of innuendos and misogyny, it’s beaten to death over the ensuing two hours”

First staged in 1990, during the first flush of Britain’s love affair with corporate greed and privatisation, Ben Elton’s ‘Gasping’ imagines a company, Lockheart Industries, commoditising the one natural resource left to exploit. With help from a marketing agency they devise and popularise the ‘Suck Blow’ machine to process air into designer variants, to achieve what Perrier and Evian achieved for water. That’s the idea, and with a small cluster of 80s stereotypes and a feverish stream of innuendos and misogyny, it’s beaten to death over the ensuing two hours.

For a modern audience the possibility that capitalism has an environmental downside is hardly a revelation and witnessing the relentless extraction of cheap jokes from the subject is as fun as fracking. Much in the style of the writer’s stand-up comedy, which worked as a mechanical barrage of anti-establishment mockery, this production from the Rising Tides Collective harvests some appreciation from its audience. However, their options are limited by the language and shallowness of this oddity dredged from a generally unmissed era. The only scene which satirises today’s world is that in which a spokesman outside 10 Downing Street (Emily Beach) advises people on how to breathe less, implicating the media in the process.

Ben Elton’s first attempt at writing for the stage might have worked better as period piece, with stylised costumes and hyperbolic performances like a restoration comedy. Indeed, William de Coverly as Philip, the golden boy of Lockheart’s Air Division, does most to embody his character’s bombast, strutting and preening like Freddy Mercury. Michael Jayes is too gentle as the destructively acquisitive Sir Chiffley Lockheart if only because, like the rest of the cast, he is allowed one dimension only in which to work. Skevy Stylia must play Kirsten the same in scenes where she’s a ‘marketing whiz’ as in those where she is ‘tasty totty’ and Gabriel Thomson’s control and competence as Sandy, Philip’s rival in the affections of both Kirsten and Sir Chiffley, seem to be for a different situation entirely.

After the interval, the brave cast are further burdened by the ill-judged incorporation of projections showing real life scenes of privation in Africa. No doubt intended to shock us into seeing that climate change is destroying real lives, right now, the sincerity appears naively bolted on and even crass in a context of knob gags and sketch-show characters.

Production design is basic as befits the era, but depresses rather than heightens the experience, with only sound (Keri Chesser) and lighting (Luke Ofield) departments coming across with confidence. As part of Climate Extinction double bill, the intentions of the production team seem irreproachable, with several new writing projects advertised. Even the idea of restaging older works from a famous name to spread the message more widely, is heartfelt. But Gasping is a superficial play designed to cash in on the alternative comedy boom, not the heartfelt plea for sanity that its producers seem to have misconceived it as.

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

The Space

Reviewed – 12th December 2019

★★★★

“The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception”

Don’t miss your chance to see this seldom performed masterpiece. It’s worth making the journey to The Isle of Dogs to see it, and The Space is an always welcoming venue which has a reputation for programming important drama. This production of The Prince of Homburg is no exception.

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

The Prince of Homburg

The Space until 14th December

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

The Space

Reviewed – 25th October 2019

★★

“with a small cluster of 80s stereotypes and a feverish stream of innuendos and misogyny, it’s beaten to death over the ensuing two hours”

Reviewed by Dominic Gettins

Gasping

The Space until 16th November

Previously reviewed at this venue: