Kohlhaas review –Arinzé Kene thunders as a wronged resistance fighter speaking truth to power

It starts and ends with a circle. Arinzé Kene stands, runs or speaks inside it. For his 16th-century horse-dealer protagonist, Michael Kohlhaas, its circularity represents a world in which all is in order. When its equanimity is disturbed with the theft of two of his most prized stallions at the hands of an entitled baron, he sets about single-handedly taking on the system that upholds this injustice, first taking his case to the law courts, then the emperor, and finally spilling angrily out on to the streets. Based on Heinrich von Kleist’s novella, Michael Kohlhaas (itself based on a real-life case), this is an awe-inspiring production, stupendously directed by Omar Elerian, and resounding across the ages in its exploration of protest as well as the personal cost of speaking truth to power. It could not be more timeless, or more relevant. Kohlhaas exhausts all reasonable, legal routes against the theft before taking up the cudgel, only resorting to violence when the system of aristocratic privilege and corruption is exposed. “What kind of world is this?” he asks in disbelief, variously told to let it go (“It’s just two horses,” says a friend) or show forgiveness (says his wife). He is an extraordinary figure – rebel, resistance hero and self-destructive fanatic in one, thunderingly rendered by Kene. The play asks difficult questions around protest: at what point does the seeking of justice turn into a desire for revenge? Does violent protest spawn its own injustices? Kohlhaas is not honoured at the end here, as in the original. These questions are left open-ended, wavering powerfully. Matthew Herbert’s compositions and sound design by Herbert and Dan Pollard (dread notes, pounding hooves), together with Jackie Shemesh’s lighting (alternately bathing, spotlighting or blackening the stage), brings palpable drama into the circle. Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s set design is spectacular in its artful simplicity; the circle is a dais with a razed terrain of ashes around it.…