Leonce and Lena

Though he’s best known for dramatic fragment ‘Woyzeck’ (the source material for Punchdrunk’s epic immersive piece ‘The Drowned Man’), playwright Georg Büchner also wrote some other plays that weren’t as good. Plays like ‘Leonce and Lena’, an overly basic comedy with a one-dimensional subtext. Sure, it probably had them pissing their pantaloons back in 1836, but in Corinna Duemler's unloveable adaptation the depiction of a dopey, pompous monarch hardly represents the bleeding edge of satire in the twenty-first century.

The plot is fairytale-simple: a pair of plummy royal twits bemoan their arranged nuptials and head off in search of something real, waxing philosophical along the way. They fall in love, hit upon a Shakespeare-apeing solution to make their marriage a reality, and hey presto, you’re having a lovely drink at the bar and ordering an Uber.

The young cast are fantastic throughout, especially Sam Adamson, who delivers the show’s strongest performance as Prince Leonce’s canny, quick-witted sidekick Valerio. His reactions are on-point throughout and his affectations add a much-needed hit of contemporary clout. I’d love to see what Kuentos Theatre can do with a livelier text, because Büchner’s poetic, yet prosaic, play proves too restrictive a vehicle for some strong talent.