The Robbers, New Diorama Theatre: review
by Friedrich Schiller
Dir: Mark Leipacher
‘Man is moulded out of dirt.’ Mark Leipacher’s production of Schiller’s The Robbers at the New Diorama Theatre sets out to show the cruelty man is capable of and the terrifying vertigo of an amoral world.
As an old Count dies, his younger son schemes, plots and murders his way to his older brother’s inheritance. Franz cold-heartedly tricks his father into disinheriting Karl, who, believing his father has banished him, turns to a group of robbers. But Robin Hood’s merry men, they are not.
Richard Delaney is the best kind of villain – seductive, cunning and entirely without conscience. He stands over his dying father and, exasperated, asks ‘How long do old men live for?’ He is the Iago of the play and Delaney’s black comic timing creates a delectably detestable baddie.
As his wronged brother Karl, Michael Lindall has a more difficult task: one character describes Karl as a ‘purring nancy’ and he’s not far wrong. Lindall starts uncomfortably, more sulky than tormented, but comes into his own in the second half. As Karl despairs of returning home and earning his father’s forgiveness, he becomes a darker, more complex character: “I am my own heaven and I am my own Hell”. His moral code allows for the incidental slaughter of innocent men, women and children as he rescues a friend from the gallows, but is disgusted when one of his band throws a chubby toddler back into the flames. Lindall struggles to convey the subtleties of Karl’s character but does better with the real Sturm und Drang moments.
Jamie Champion is convincingly black-hearted as robber Spiegelberg while Jude Owusu-Achiaw manages to be the diamond in the rough as Schweizer. Karl’s steadfast but fiery fiancé, Amalia, is played by a forthright Kate Sawyer while Lana Booty’s old Count, Max, is touching and Lear-like.
Leipacher has set out to make this play accessible: it is modern dress, the updated script (by Daniel Millar and Mark Leipacher) is peppered with modern obscenities and the robbers’ banter is straight out of the twenty-first century. But The Robbers is not a modern story, with its Counts, curses, castles and highwaymen and so the modern dress tends to grate.
The stage is stripped bare and all the walls painted black, allowing the cast to use chalk to write or draw on every surface – a technique which manages to underline both the fragility of life and the weakness of the lies woven by Franz. Yet occasionally Leipacher tries too hard and there are three or four things which demand the audience’s attention at once – dialogue, someone writing in chalk, people fighting. It would do no harm to allow the story to speak for itself now and again.
At around three hours, including an interval, the evening is overly long but Leipacher’s production is a thrilling piece of drama with enthralling plot twists, ladles of dramatic irony and a brilliant villain at its heart.
This review first appeared on The Public Reviews here.
Anthony Sher stars in Arthur Miller’s tale of guilt, love and tragedy in 1930s Brooklyn.
