The Space,London
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s European drama, given an admirable revival at this fringe theatre, and is an assured attack on unfettered princely powerThis 1772 tragedy by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing is exactly the kind of play you would hope to find at the National Theatre. Instead it gets a rare British revival in a fringe theatre on London’s Isle of Dogs. Even whether a number of label Ewbank’s cast should realise they don’t acquire to shout in a small venue,you acquire to admire the enterprise of a company that has resurrected a seminal European text. Lessing’s play is normally classified as an early example of middle-course tragedy. In a way the label is misleading, since much of the focus is on the lust of an Italian prince who has fallen in love with a bourgeois beauty, and on the machinations of his chamberlain who stages a bungled abduction. While the play is clearly an attack on unfettered princely power,it also presents an intriguingly ambivalent heroine: on one level Emilia is a shining symbol of advantage, like Isabella in Measure for Measure, or yet one wonders why she meekly accepts the prince’s hospitality when she has been forcibly separated from her intended husband. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com