pre-suite42

Leonce & Lena – by Georg Büchner

Georg Buchner’s dreamlike social satire, written in 1836, is not the easiest play to stage and director Lydia Ziemke’s production does a good job of teasing out the play’s comic elements as well as of exploring Buchner’s recurrant theme of man as automaton. […]

This is a production that strives for and occassionaly achives, a sense of the magical. Fortunately imagination is not in such short supply — there are a number of wonderfully inventive touches in Ziemke’s staging, not to mention some nicely handled physical comedy, in particular the scene when the befuddled King has to be dressed by his two courtiers.

Some strong performances help matters further and there is an excellent rapport betweeen Theo Cross, as the idle, bored Prince Leonce of Popo, and Will Beer as his jester-like friend Valerio. The latter’s antics do much to inject the humour and lightness into the production. (The Stage, Tuesday, 23 January 2007)

When someone feels that they have a task as laborious and meaningless as that of Sisyphus, perhaps they have a right to feel melancholy. Indeed, when that person has their fated love chosen for them, they can feel disempowered and hopeless. Yet, when that »one« is the romantic Prince of Popo, and he is being accompanied by such a starry-eyed and lyrically swashbuckling companion as Valerio, then spirits can only rise. This is the set-up in Lydia Ziemke’s reinterpretation of Georg Buchner’s satirical play Leonce and Lena, which has just opened at the Tabard Theatre in Turnham Green.

As Prince Leonce and his compatriot Valerio embark on their quest for love and the meaning of life, they cut through many of the duchies, principalities and other small »onion states« that have long since disappeared from the European map. Like the early 19th-century map of Europe, Ziemke’s adaptation is full of quaint arrangements that make the multi-faceted scenes, from melancholic to comic, in the hunt for »Destination True Love« thoroughly enjoyable and alive.

Sign-posting the action with comic interludes from the senile King of Popo and his sycophant advisors, Ziemke keeps the performance fresh and relevant to today’s world. Immersed in the spirit of Kant and Schopenhauer, repeatedly called the most pessimistic of all philosophers, the often dark satire springs to life in the most unexpectedly comic moments, aided with the humorous grace of a well-cast ensemble awash with talent. Buchner’s original play acutely lampooned the society he shunned. Similarly, through well-timed turns from the fabulously senile King Peter (David Morley-Hale), his dry-witted Minister (Will Tosh), and the charismatic Valerio (Will Beer), we find many a moment to reflect on the ways in which the excesses of power are objectionable and ridiculous.

Cross, as Leonce, deserves a particular mention. As the self-obsessed Crown Prince, he grabs the audience, holding their attention for the best part of an hour and a half as he stomps from one hissy fit to the next. Yet he shakes out their emotions until the audience is positively willing him to succeed. Embellished with beautiful turns of phrase, delivered with the clarity of winter air, Leonce and Lena is a production that, though on a limited budget, does not cut corners. The set is ample with one cloth prop throughout and a velvet backdrop because of the clever use made of it proving that less can truly be more. All in all, however, much like our masked automatons, this is a striking play with many faces. And the production is truly a new flowering for an old classic. (Jonathan Grant, my London your London)