A ballet legend dances in the dark
Prince Friedrich Arthur of Homburg commanded the cavalry of the German region of Brandenburg at the Battle of Fehrbellin in 1675, and defeated the invading army of Sweden by leading a charge without waiting for orders from above. That much is history; or at least historical legend. In The Prince of Homburg, an extraordinary play written in 1811, the German playwright Heinrich von Kleist took the legend and ran with it. The play is a classic in its own country, and over the past 40 years has begun to establish itself in England. It seems never to have been professionally performed here until last week, when Talk Is Free theatre in Barrie, Ont., gave it a courageous Canadian premiere. That production, the directorial debut of the renowned choreographer James Kudelka, has its final performance tonight. It’s worth travelling to see.
Kleist changed the battle story by turning the Prince’s victorious manoeuvre from an unauthorized act to one of actual insubordination. He’d been told at the pre-battle briefing not to make a move until instructed, but he wasn’t paying attention. This is because, in the words of an old pop song, the kid’s a dreamer.
We meet him at the beginning of the play, stretched out in the castle garden, in some kind of trance, plaiting himself a laurel wreath. Summoned to witness this strange sight the Elector, Brandenburg’s ruler, he decides to have a little fun. He removes the wreath, entwines his own chain of office around it, and then returns it. Aroused from his half-slumber into half-waking, Friedrich catches sight of Princess Natalia, the Elector’s niece, and cries out his love for her. He also finds himself in possession of Natalia’s dropped glove. At which point, the Elector decides that the joke has gone quite far enough and departs, bidding the Prince to wake up and report for duty. “Victory,” he says ominously, “cannot be won by dreams.”
It turns out that it can, putting both ruler and ruled in uncomfortable positions. Prince Friedrich finds himself thanked and congratulated for his vic- tory, and court-martialled for his disobedience. He is in fact condemned to death, but he takes the sentence with surprising lightheartedness. He’s convinced that the judgment is for show, and that he’ll be reprieved. He’s only jolted out of this when he beholds his own prepared grave; the sight turns him to jelly, and he declares that in order to live, he will give up anything, including his requited love for Natalia. She, though, has her own plans.
Meanwhile, she makes a personal plea to the Elector, who was planning to marry her off as part of a treaty with the Swedes. Very well, he says in effect; if the prince wants life at the expense of honour, let him choose. We spend the last part of the play wondering which way the two men, ruler and ruled, will jump. The suspense is terrific.
Part of it is due to the fact that, once you accept the play’s military ethos and its patriotic bias, there are no unsympathetic characters. We root for all of them, even when their aims seem incompatible.
Kudelka’s production gets this hearteningly right, though, surprisingly given his background in ballet, it is sometimes physically awkward. Kleist was a writer with a luxuriant imagination but his plays seldom get the resources they deserve. Nick Blais’ designs here are a serviceable cut above, though I wish the vital castle ramp could have been less cluttered.
Most of the men’s scenes involve conference and camaraderie and these actors, largely from Stratford and Shaw, have the martial ensemble spirit down pat. These actors bring their own style. But the production can’t find one for the women. Katherine Cullen as Natalia and Jean Yoon as the Elector’s wife are reduced to playing line by line, with no connective tissue.
The play wakes any number of theatrical echoes, forwards and back. Its premature twin is Calderon’s Life’s a Dream, which I’d recommend as a future project for this theatre — or for any theatre. Natalia confronting the Elector cannot help reminding us of Isabella pleading for her brother’s life in Measure for Measure. And the prince’s conduct on the field is identical to that of the vainglorious Sergius, hero by accident in Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Shaw, of course, treated it as comedy. So did Kleist, but he gave it the outward form of tragedy. The unsettling combination kept the play off even German stages for years. But its time has come.