The Prince of Homburg
Donmar, until 4 September
Danton’s Death
Olivier, in rep until 14 October
Welcome to London. This month we’re hosting the world’s very first, but probably not its last, Useless German Playwright Festival. Here’s a scribbler you may not have heard of. Heinrich von Kleist, born in 1777, angered his Prussian family by quitting the army and setting up as a dramatist. After an energetic start he decided he had better things to do with his life and killed himself.
His final play, The Prince of Homburg, shows that he still had much to learn before his premature exit. It takes him an hour to tell us that an excitable young general, Homburg, has fluffed his orders during a victory over the Swedes, been charged with disobedience and sentenced to death. The second hour examines Homburg’s culpability while the winsome young madcap languishes in jail wondering whether to unsheathe his regimental meat cleaver and sacrifice himself to the higher ideal of army discipline. (The Nazis loved this play, apparently.) I’m sure barristers, field marshals and professional advocates concerned with the minutiae of military jurisprudence will flock to this show in their dozens and will emerge from its two hours of turgid quibbling in paroxysms of joy. The rest will find it a tedious Mozartian potboiler with lots of nice uniforms and shiny boots.
Homburg’s commanding officer is played by Ian McDiarmid, an able and severely limited performer. If you want fastidious Bohemianism there’s no one better for the job but if you want stiff-necked Prussian rectitude there are thousands better. It’s like casting John Inman as General Patton. McDiarmid has every skill of enunciation known to acting but he lacks the wisdom to conceal his artistry.
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