The Prince of Homburg

Swan, Stratford-upon-Avon
More reviews 4 / 5 stars
The Prince of Homburg

Drama is often built around dreams: think of Shakespeare, Calderon, Strindberg, Pirandello. But Heinrich von Kleist's Prince of Homburg, written in 1811 shortly before his suicide at the age of 34, is one of the greatest of all dream plays; and, having been rediscovered by the Royal Exchange and the National, it now gets a first-rate revival by Neil Bartlett in a joint RSC-Lyric Hammersmith production.

What is striking about the play is its ambiguity. Set during the time of Brandenburg's battles against the Swedes, it starts in a moonlit garden with a somnambulistic Prince spurred into dreams of military and amorous conquest by the presence of the Elector and his niece. The one thing the Prince doesn't foresee is his own death; that seems imminent the next day when he leads his cavalry in an unauthorised charge against the Swedes and, although he is victorious, he faces execution. What follows is an intricate cat-and-mouse game in which the Elector offers to quash the sentence if the Prince can prove the verdict was unjust.

Like all great plays, it is susceptible to any number of possibilities. Appropriated by the Nazis, it was seen by them as a celebration of the ultimately obedient Prussian hero. Peter Stein, in his famous 1972 production, treated it as an embodiment of Kleist's own Romantic yearnings for acceptance. But what I found in Bartlett's version was a dazzling play about the enigmatic nature of responsibility. Who, after all, is to blame for the Prince's action? Is it the Prince himself? Or the Elector who meddled with his dreams? Or the Prince's friend who first invited the Elector into the moonlit garden? In the end, Kleist suggests, every action has an infinite number of causes - which is precisely what makes life a dream.

The great virtue of Bartlett's production, historically concrete yet played on a bare, raked stage beautifully lit by Paule Constable, is that it leaves us free to work out Kleist's meaning. My only cavil is that awkward blocking obscures the crucial opening scene. But Bartlett skilfully evokes the battles through circumambient sound. Using his own and David Bryer's trans lation, he also gets superbly defined performances. James Laurenson has done nothing better than the Elector, whom he interprets as a ramrod-backed militarist who, like the Duke in Measure for Measure, ironically enjoys playing God. Dan Fredenburgh's Prince also has the right frenzied impulsiveness, and there is first-rate support from Tanya Moodie as the desired Natalie and Lynn Farleigh as the imperious Electress. You emerge with the exhilarating and unsettling experience of having been plunged into the heart of someone else's dream.

· Until February 16. Box office: 01789 403403. At the Lyric Hammersmith London W6 (020 8741 2311) from February 22.