Honorable Prince seeks answers

COURTESY SCHOOL OF DRAMA The Prince of Homburg and his princess wax German

Heinrich Von Kleist completed The Prince of Homburg shortly before killing himself in 1811, proclaiming in his suicide letter, "I die because nothing remains for me to learn and achieve on earth." It's quite a statement for his final play to live up to, and American producers have been all too wary to take up the challenge. Although revered in Germany as a classic, The Prince of Homburg has only been produced twice in the United States. Make that thrice—David Kennedy's, DRA '00, Drama School production at the University Theater is a rare opportunity to see this Romantic tour-de-force.

Based on the 1675 Battle of Fehrbellin—a town near Berlin—The Prince of Homburg chronicles the conflict of Prince Friedrich (Brandon T. Miller, DRA '01), who must choose between his honor and his life. Inspired by a divine vision, and in defiance of a direct order from the Elector of Brandenburg (Ronald Dean Nolen, DRA '00), the prince leads a cavalry charge into battle. He is sentenced to death for this act, and cannot accept a pardon without staining his honor. This internal struggle is set against a background of war, romance, and court life, where military laws transcend all others. During the play Friedrich is told that "the things you seek cannot be won by dreaming," but he is another Hamlet, distractedly contemplating his own death.

The play has a happier ending than that of its writer, but if it still sounds a little heavy handed, it is. It's also long: two and a half hours that begin to drag in the second act, when the plot's thickness and the characters' telling of already transpired events grows redundant.

Yet Kennedy focuses on just the right aspects of the play: its dreamy tangents and symbolic richness. The visual details deftly incorporate the script's metaphors, and mirror the Prince's own emotional state. The curtain rises on a scene out of a Greek myth: the Prince sits in a white shirt under a field of stars, an upside-down tree branch extended above his head. Princess Natalia of Orange (Amy Morse, DRA '00) sings to him in a white gown. Indeed, most interaction between the Prince and Princess occurs within suspended pauses in which all other characters on stage are frozen. The image of those two ghostly figures on the dark stage sharply contrasts with the scenes within the Elector's chamber, where the red flag of Prussia hangs as a blazing backdrop, and the soldiers assemble in a careful choreography. The second act, which takes place mainly within the Prince's confinement cell, has a stark set and shadowed lighting. And in the play's final moments, flower petals rain down, as if the stars from the play's opening scene had bloomed into color.

It is a challenge for the cast to have a commanding presence amid such vivid staging, and often they struggle not to be overwhelmed by the set. On the whole though, the ensemble is strong. Miller is most successful when bringing out the humor in many of the Prince's lines. Nolan plays effective foil to him as the supercilious Elector, who in the end proves capable of empathy. Kleist didn't allow for his female characters to have much independence or spunk, but Morse, and Alicia Roper, DRA '00, as the Electress, give fine and consistent performances.

The Prince of Homburg is an ambitious play, and this is as ambitious a production. If, in the end, it's hard to fully connect to the characters or believe the plot, there's enough on stage to compensate. Like a dream, if you let the pragmatic details fade away, you too can be suspended for a few hours.

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