The Prince of Homburg

Synopsis

Set in Prussia the play is concerned with questions of loyalty, obedience, patriotism and love. The night before he leads his troops into battle, the Prince of Homburg strips off his uniform and goes sleepwalking. Moonstruck, his mind races with a young man's fantasies - love, ambition and victory. But when morning comes, a single reckless act of disobedience sets in motion a chain of events that leads inexorably to the one thing he never dreamt would happen; his own death.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 28 July 2010

Hold on to your hats: Homburg’s back in town. Last seen at the RSC eight years ago, he’s the dreaming Prussian prince - who disobeys orders, wins the great 17th-century battle of Fehrbellin against the Swedes, and is sentenced to death nonetheless - as commemorated in Henrich von Kleist’s last play before he committed suicide in 1811 aged just 34.

Jonathan Munby’s revival, in a new prose version by Dennis Kelly (from a literal translation by Heike Roemer; the original is in verse), certainly looks like a Donmar production: torches, flagstones, big dark wall, great lighting (by Neil Austin), doomy music – in fact it looks rather like the other Donmar production currently playing at the National, Danton’s Death.

And there’s the same youthful impatience with military authority and political despotism. Ian McDiarmid plays the Elector of Brandenburg as a viperish intellectual sadist, with a voice now like a melodious cro...

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Latest User Review

David Baxter - 28 August 2010:

Very occasionally the Donmar gets things completely wrong and unfortunately The Prince of Homburg is a prime example. The play is unfamiliar so it's impossible to say if it's because of von Kleist's confused scenario or Dennis Kelly's clumsy adaptation. The motivations of the two leading protagonists are constantly shifting in contrary directions and are not helped by performances from Ian McDiarmid and Charlie Cox which do nothing to suggest that either would inspite blind loyalty or a potential mutiny. Worst of all, Kelly has apparently completely changed the ending. This might make slightly more dramatic sense, particularly given the heavy-handed comparisons with Hitler's Reich, but it is not the play von Kleist wrote. It's like Othello having a moment of clarity and turning in Iago instead of Desdemona - interesting but not Shakespeare. Perhaps Michael Grandage has been distracted by his directing duties at the National because this has been a mixed year for the Donmar so far, a victim of almost impossibly high expectations....

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