Who
would have thought it - Schiller in Shaftesbury Avenue? But the
spellbound audience and the loud huzzahs bore testament not only
to the grip of this great romantic tragedy: they paid tribute
to the brilliance of Michael Grandage's Sheffield Crucible production.
Passion and politics magnificently intersect in Schiller's play.
Don Carlos, heir to the tyrannical Philip II, is the last hope
of the freedom-fighting Marquis of Posa, who champions Spain's
oppressed peoples. But Carlos is a helpless dreamer, fatally smitten
by love for his stepmother and brutally neglected by his cold-hearted
father. So, at every stage, the conflict between absolutism and
liberty is intertwined with a drama about flawed personal relationships.
What makes it a great play is that Schiller espouses freedom while
understanding power. And if any one performance dominates the
evening it is Derek Jacobi's superb Philip II. The key to his
performance lies in its emotional solitude. This is a man who
has tragically sacrificed love to power; and the famous scene
in which the king mistakenly thinks he has found a surrogate son
in Posa becomes the most haunting of the evening as Jacobi looks
into the Marquis's eyes as if searching into his soul. It instantly
makes you want to see Jacobi's Lear.
Grandage has carefully orchestrated every aspect of the tragedy.
Christopher Oram's design, with its swinging thurible and high-barred
windows, embodies the idea of Spain as a religious prison. The
cicada-like hiss of the ladies' fluttering fans and Adam Cork's
menacing score add to a sense of entrapment. Paule Constable's
spooky lighting conjures shadows from which Velasquez-costumed
figures emerge like power-playing phantoms.
Carlos is least equipped to play the power game, and Richard
Coyle invests him with the right neurotic frenzy.
But there is equally good work from Claire Price, who lends Queen
Elizabeth a furious innocence, and from Elliot Cowan, who has
gained in authority as the idealistic Posa. Ian Hogg and Michael
Hadley appear to great effect as a pair of devious plotters, and
Peter Eyre makes a starling late entrance as a Grand Inquisitor
resembling a scarlet stick insect. The evening is a triumph that
at last puts Schiller centre stage.
