Don Carlos

In ‘Don Carlos’ a father-son drama in the Spanish ruling house is crossed with at least one and a half stories of jealousy so that the personal inevitably becomes political. Every spark of love automatically means benefits or trouble for the state. All those involved in Roger Vontobel’s production take politics seriously but tend to use it as a substitute battleground for their own egos and amours. These Spanish grandees and their behaviour may not be simplistic but they are relatively transparent: status-conscious leaders who for all their sense of social responsibility remain chiefly concerned with their power, their influence and their women. Vontobel and Schiller use them to present a political and psychological portrait of the present: everyone talks about freedom, by which they each mean principally their own, which for this very reason is doomed to failure. Eventually the networks of interest in this circle of intrigue become so densely enmeshed that nobody can move. These active and confident individuals tie themselves in chains – an endgame of the egos.

Franz Wille