Insite

Jorge Cacheiro, in adapting Heinrich von Kleist’s The Prince of Homburg with his MSU theater students, reimagines the piece with Kleist as an onstage character. Off to the sides of this sober, lichen-colored set, we see a young man pacing and mimicking the play as it progresses. He mutters interjections (lines from Kleist’s other writings and not part of the original play) and interacts with the lead characters. Downstage there are model soldiers, as if the set itself is a giant dollhouse, a toy box for the fevered imagination of Kleist himself. This addition is an interesting parallel to the main character, the eponymous Prince of the title. The Prince is tortured: should he obey his army superiors’ commands in battle, or should he pursue the other side’s troupes as he was expressly forbidden? There’s battle on one hand and love on the other, for the Prince continually dreams about the Princess, while he is in battle and after he is in jail for disobeying orders. He is plagued by tactical choices and romantic issues that cloud his judgment and his mind’s eye. Kleist is comparable to the Prince himself—both are dreamers and fear the future; Kleist ultimately took his own life, which is why it makes such sense for Cacheiro to juxtapose the two.

The big issues to look for in this production are group obeisance versus freewill, the present moment versus how one sees oneself and is perceived, and the act of artistic manipulation. Kleist rips his writing off the walls of the set, and the room deteriorates in the second half. Both are visual manifestations of the themes that Kleist and Cacheiro—even the Prince himself—explore together.

Raphael Martin has worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Court Theatre, Gate Theatre, and Bush Theatre, all in London. Most recently, he was Literary Manager at New York City’s Manhattan Theatre Club.