Luise Miller

It’s easy to observe Schiller’s debt to Shakespeare in this 1783 play about a pair of star-crossed lovers thwarted by familial and courtly opposition and intrigue. Throw in a wicked flunkey who convinces the young man of his sweetheart’s faithlesness and you’ve got two Bardic masterpieces for the price of one.

But there’s more than rudimentary literary detective work to admire in Michael Grandage’s pacy, action-packed production (the third Schiller revival in recent memory marks his Donmar swansong).

Mike Poulton’s muscular translation for one is impressive, allowing us to taste fully Schiller’s modern vision of romantic love and radical hopes for a world without rank.

As Luise, Felicity Jones is sweet and stoical and her lover, Max Bennett’s Ferdinand, is passionate with just the right amount of priggishness to make us reflect on the wisdom of his idealism. Ben Daniels is also impressively brutal as the father and wily Chancellor Ferdinand disobeys. And Alex Kingston sculpts a rounded portrait of the courtesan Lady Milford, riven with ruthless practicality and a sensitive, wounded heart.

Paule Constable’s lighting and Peter McKintosh’s dusty dark brick clad set are also unerringly ominous and even creepy at times.

But while the production is skilful and rarely loses an ounce of momentum, our direction is all too easily signposted towards the inevitably fateful conclusion driven by a Roman Catholic piety and religiosity that feels even more anachronistic and absurd than usual. The play refers constantly to the wider world of kingship and realpolitik, but what we see and what we finally get is essentially a family drama with, by the end, more than its fair share of melodrama.