Wallenstein

 WALLENSTEIN BY ALAN O'CAIN

Have you done your homework? This play takes us to a period of European History few know much about. It's the first half of the seventeenth century and exactly the middle of the Thirty Years' War. We're in Pilsen, Bohemia, and in the camp of Prince Albrecht von Wallenstein, commander of Emperor Ferdinand's imperial forces. The Empire is at war with Protestant antagonists on several fronts.

And Wallenstein, beloved by his soldiers, has reached a dilemma.

German playwright Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) knew, by the time he wrote his great Wallenstein trilogy, that dilemma is at the heart of drama. And adaptor Mike Poulton, in moulding Schiller's trio of plays into one, capitalises on that by giving us a quintessentially tormented protagonist. Iain Glen, through a captivating series of tortured yet majestic physical poses, breathes agonised life into Wallenstein's ever more world-weary declamations. Like Julius Caesar and Macbeth before him, we sense he is doomed from the start.

Wallenstein famously had Kepler draw up astrological charts, and Robert Innes Hopkins adds twinkling stars of fate to the dark gothic pillars of his atmospheric set. Unlike Shakespeare's two great tragedies of military demise however, this is a play in which the portents are wrong. Schiller was writing at the dawn of a century where superstition was to be superceded by science, and Wallenstein's fate is the result of actions that are entirely his own.

As Wallenstein's turncoat friend Octavio Piccolomini, Anthony Calf brings anxious quietude to a beautifully restrained performance. And Max Irons, as Octavio's Wallenstein-worshipping son, struts with convincing youthful idealism - all the more starkly to highlight the resigned pragmatism and miserable cynicism of these war-ravaged characters; these Cranach portraits come to life. And in this Angus Jackson's production is a triumph. From the ghostly entrance of burgundy and beige clad German-singing soldiers to the faded tapestries and rugs of the final scenes, we are privileged time travellers. And sometimes period drama is not a place where contemporary relevance needs to be shoehorned. Mike Poulton, and the entire, and consistently accomplished company should be heralded for transporting us, unapologetically, and as only live theatre can, into a dark, chaotic and utterly convincing alien past.

Alan O'Cain is a professional artist and poet. His projects often involve collaboration with the worlds of theatre, music and opera. Visit his Artworld at www.aoart.co.uk.