LEONCE AND LENA
Tabard Theatre, London W4
Opened 19 January, 2007
***
It is an audacious move for the new management of the Tabard pub
theatre to stage the least well-known of Georg Büchner' three
plays: London has seen his Woyzeck
half a dozen times since the last revival of its predecessor Leonce And Lena (1836). In some
ways, that is not surprising. Where the unfinished text and fragmented
psychology of Woyzeck led
Büchner to be dubbed the father of modernism, the targets of Leonce And Lena's scattergun satire
are all very much of the writer's own time.
Its general butts include rationalism (King Peter of Popo wanders
around musing like a cut-price Kant), its rebellious response,
Romanticism (his son Leonce wanders likewise, crushed by the banal and
yearning for the sublime) and the sycophancy of royal courts far
removed from the reality beyond their walls. More specific lampoons are
aimed at the tiny, self-aggrandising German statelets of the period
(the king orders that a watch be kept on the frontiers of his kingdom,
to be told that they can easily do so from the windows of the room they
are now in), and a particular arranged marriage in Büchner's own
home state of Hesse. In the play, Prince Leonce goes walkabout with a
Sancho Panza figure, Valerio, meets and falls in love with Princess
Lena of Pipi who is similarly trying to escape her own arranged
marriage; only when they tie the knot do they discover that they are
after all each other's royal intended.
Lydia Ziemke's production is inventively staged, with designer Kate
Myran making resourceful use of semi-diaphanous drapes in an otherwise
amorphous playing space. But there seems little attempt to bridge the
gap of nearly two centuries, apart from Leonce and sidekick Valerio
briefly singing the Statler Brothers' song about smoking cigarettes and
watching Captain Kangaroo. If
it doesn't work as satire, it needs to do so as more straightforward
humour. However, few of the young cast are prepared to make vigorous
enough pillocks of themselves for this: aside from Will Beer's Valerio
and possibly David Morley-Hale's King Peter, their earnestness is more
naturalistic than absurd. This seems to be one of those plays that it
is more satisfying to have
seen than actually to be watching.
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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