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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