The Prince Of Homburg *** TNT

German playwright Heinrich von Kleist took his life in a suicide pact at the age of 34, and this, written in 1811, the year of his death, was to be his final finished play.

Dennis Kelly’s sprightly new version opens with the eponymous Prince sleepwalking in the garden where his somnambulist reveries are intruded upon by the Prussian Elector and his attractive niece, Princess Natalia. The consequences prove catastrophic.

Preoccupied with waking remnants of a vision of the lovely Natalia, the Prince fails to note the strict battle orders issued by her uncle. As a result, he uses his own initiative to win the battle against the Swedes – and finds himself facing a court-martial for his impetuous behaviour.

Kleist questions whether the punishment doled out for his misdemeanour should fit the “crime” of flouting the rules of military discipline or be tempered by the positive results of a precipitous action, and whether the greater good really is served by sacrificing individual autonomy to strict state authority.

Charlie Cox’s naive Prince has a youthfully exuberant quality as he veers from an unshakeable belief that the man he viewed as a father figure would not sanction the death sentence, to cravenly begging for his life, to the final conviction that his unauthorised behaviour does indeed warrant the ultimate penalty. But, in an attractively staged production directed by Jonathan Munby, it is Ian McDiarmid’s Elector who commands attention – an experienced manipulator who plays the young lovers with a precise, icy intensity to achieve his own ends.

Donmar, Earlham Street WC2H 9LX (0844 871 7624) Tube: Covent Garden
donmarwarehouse.com Until 4th September £15 - £26