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:

1 March 2002

Note: The following review dates from February 2002 and this production's original Stratford run.

Heinrich von Kleist's The Prince of Homburg is a co-production between the RSC and the Lyric Hammersmith. It's directed by Neil Bartlett, the artistic director of the Lyric, who has prepared the new version of the play used here. The cohesion Bartlett brings is essential to unify this complex and disparate dream.

People who like to put plays into clear categories of period, theme, genre and style will be disconcerted by this poetic, strange and fascinating piece. A flawed masterpiece, it inhabits a world somewhere between dream and reality. A product of the age of Beethoven and Goethe, when German Romanticism was emerging from European Enlightenment, it seems almost to prefigure Freud in its exploration of neurosis and mental breakdown.

The prince of Homburg is a leader of the Prussian army, brave but impetuous, who disobeys an order in the heat o...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com - 22 February 2002:

I thought this play was absolutely fascinating - it's wonderful to have Neil Bartlett back on such spectacular form, rediscovering the most interesting pieces in highly unique ways....

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