Don
Carlos Stamped with greatness
There have been few occasions in my theatregoing life when I have
been more comprehensively thrilled, moved or excited. Friedrich
Schiller's classic tragedy of 16th-century Spain stirs a fatal
brew of politics and sexual longing, libertarian urges and religious
fanaticism. Michael Grandage's dark night of the soul production
stirs these antagonistic elements to a fever-pitch of argument
and betrayal. The high notes of emotion are not melodramatically
engineered, but caused by the clash of opposing ideas.
Mike Poulton's poetic new translation makes the conflict memorable.
"They have contracted the same terrible disease: Humanity.
And Humanity you know is very contagious," warns the King
of Spain's Confessor, horrified by flickers of independent thought.
In Christopher Oram's bare, black and-white design and Paule Constable's
murky lighting scheme, the Spanish court resembles a prison menaced
by religion and rigid decorum. The grille-like windows of the
high-ceilinged room add to the claustrophobia. Ladies-in-waiting,
as precise as clocks, flutter their fans with agitated hands.
Cowled monks and obsequious courtiers scuttle around like disturbed
beetles or cluster like impassive birds of prey.
The air reeks of liturgical chanting and incense. Occasional candles
and an illuminated cross brighten the semi-darkness when doors
swing open. It is a world and a court where the Catholic religion
and Inquisition imposes a reign of conformist terror. You could
call Don Carlos an early piece of magic realism, in which Schiller
reinvents Spanish history.
Writing shortly before the French Revolution he wafts the Enlightenment
figure of the young Marquis of Posa (charismatic Elliot Cowan)
into 16th-century Spain. Here Posa tries to fire his adored and
perhaps sexually adoring friend, the Prince Regent, Don Carlos,
with the idea of bringing religious freedom to persecuted Protestants
of the Spanish Netherlands. Can Carlos replace Ian Hogg's repressive
murderous Duke of Alba? The prince, played by Richard
Coyle like some sulky, tousle-haired Hamlet, prefers
to dream of his former fiancée and present stepmother,
the Queen, whom Claire Price portrays as an insecure girl with
ideas beneath her station.
The baroque plot, involving a lovelorn young princess and a sheaf
of risky love letters, depends upon Posa, an anachronistic, Age
of Enlightenment figure, who would fly the religious freedom flag
in Holland. Philip II, a figure of icy hauteur and perfect loneliness,
ironically sees in this liberty-fighter the son he never had.
Derek Jacobi's testy monarch cannot resist playing hot and bothered,
rather than cool and commanding. The great scene when Cowan's
fervent Posa fights with fine words to persuade the absolutist
king he cannot imprison men's minds forever, enjoys a timeless
resonance.
It can be no accident that Posa, a hero-figure of noble but dangerous
idealism, seems more regally assured than Jacobi's lonesome king.
The abject failure of Posa's dream of religious freedom, the collapse
of Miss Price's poignantly stressed Queen and the disarray of
Coyle's impressively enraged, father-hating Carlos
signal the Inquisition's triumph. Moving like some wounded spider,
Peter Eyre's remarkable, croaking nonagenarian Grand Inquisitor
chillingly warns Philip that freedom of conscience is a forbidden
luxury. This Don Carlos, with its timely warnings about religious
fanaticism, is stamped with greatness.
