Published: 05 August 2010
by HOWARD LOXTON

HEINRICH von Kleist’s 200-year-old play takes a real prince and the 1675 Battle of Fehrbellin and puts them in a fiction about discipline, pride, bravery and honour. 

Prince Arthur should be marching off with the cavalry but instead he is sleepwalking in a moonlight garden holding a victor’s wreath and dreaming of glory. 

Before he wakes, the Elector Friederich of Brandenberg and his court amuse themselves by playing a trick on him. Its repercussions make Arthur fail to pay attention to his battle orders and, though leading a charge that wins the field for the Prussians, sees him facing a court martial. 

The opening dream-like image of the subconscious sets heroic romanticism against the realities of power that the rest of the play pursues. 

Hitler’s Nazis used this play to celebrate the virtues of blind obedience and devotion to the Fatherland. Watching Ian McDiarmid’s family man Elector become the cold autocrat, I couldn’t help thinking of the Führer. 

McDiarmid dominates this production with calm control, barely having to raise his voice to wield the iron rod of his authority. The uniformed militarism of the court in Jonathan Mumby’s production, with its smart salutes and formal, parade ground groupings leaves little room for Homburg’s romanticism. 

Charlie Cox’s Prince gives us the egotism (which has made him  cock up a couple of previous battles) but we don’t get enough of the charm that makes a charismatic leader of his men and wins the love of the Elector’s niece  that would make us root for him too. 

With the stress placed on the Elector, when the Prince makes a decision on which his life depends and which was once interpreted as support for all the Third Reich stood for, Prince Arthur here becomes a man trapped in an oppressive ideology – a reading that is reinforced by a rewriting of Kleist’s ending.

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