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In its heyday, New York's adventurous Chelsea Theatre Center was a renowned purveyor of all things experimental on the stage. This included not just new works, but classics from other cultures that remained unknown in the United States. Director Robert Kalfin's production of The Prince of Homburg--reportedly the work's first American staging--is a perfect example. Heinrich von Kleist wrote his drama in 1811 (before the 30-something author carried out a scandalous suicide pact). Although it has long been a venerated landmark of classical German theater, its sensibility isn't easy for contemporary English-speaking audiences to access. Kleist's story centers around a Prussian nobleman and military hero--the titular Prince of Homburg--who impetuously disobeys his superior's strict orders and thus achieves a glorious victory. The penalty, according to the Spartan ethos of Prussian military society, is death. Kleist shows the Prince grappling with his fate, finally accepting and willing it, only to be offered an unsettling chance of reprieve. The play's strange and unclassifiable style synthesizes elements of Goethean classicism (the ancient Greek preoccupation with individual initiative vs. social duty is paramount as well) with Romanticism's new subjectivity, not to mention presentiments of a later age's existentialism and psychologizing. Directors Robert Kalfin and Kirk Browning, with minimal intervention (including an added framing device), allow the play to speak for itself in its eloquent richness, instead of reducing it to one of the many subtexts--reason vs. instinct, existential horror, the truth of dream life distinguished from consciousness--that are integral to Kleist's art. This production was prepared for PBS's Great Performances series in 1977 and filmed in period 17th-century costume at the North Carolina Biltmore House. The centerpiece is of course Frank Langella’s turn in the title role--roughly contemporaneous with his famed revival of Dracula. Langella's portrayal, nuanced by remarkably sensitive facial expressions in close up, pirouettes with dizzying speed across a spectrum: it encompasses the romantic dreamer, blustering coward, giddy holy fool, and--in a scene echoing Hamlet's sea change in the last act of Shakespeare's tragedy--matured man of experience serenely at peace with death. The English translation fails to convey Kleist's visionary poetry and often sounds stilted, clearly an impediment for some of the supporting cast. Chapter selections are limited to just one for each of the play's two acts, and the only other "special features" are an exceedingly brief intro by Hal Holbrook and teasers from other titles in the Broadway Theatre Archive series. Still, this release offers a fascinating entrée for those just discovering German theater. Even more, it's an invaluable document for enthusiasts of the American theater and its development. --Thomas May
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