A new London theatre, based in the Grade II-listed building Rudolf Steiner House, is to be launched with a play that completes an unfinished work by Friedrich Schiller.
Written by Peter Oswald, Dmitry will open the Marylebone theatre in the refurbished space formerly known as Steiner Hall near Baker Street. It will have a world premiere in September. The theatre will programme dance, spoken word and music as well as new plays.
Oswald’s drama is inspired by the incomplete Demetrius, about the eponymous Russian czar at the start of the 17th century. Schiller worked on his play in the months leading up to his death in 1805. Dmitry’s director, Tim Supple, said it gives a timely and “frighteningly vivid” perspective on Russia.
In the play, Dmitry claims the Russian throne, saying he is the son of Ivan the Terrible, and the Polish army rallies behind him in his bid to topple Boris Godunov. “In Russia, history treats him as an aggressive pseudo-pretender,” said Supple. “Schiller was interested in the clash between the Roman Catholic church and the Russian Orthodox church. There’s also the geopolitical clash between the west as represented by the papal interest in Poland and the east as represented by the Orthodox church in Russia.”
Supple said the play considered Russia’s bid, over the centuries, “to secure around it a huge sphere of influence and control – and whether you look on that as ongoing paranoia or deep-seated cultural aggression or its rightful need to defend itself against the west’s overwhelming desire to possess Russia”.
Schiller, best known for his plays Mary Stuart and Don Carlos, “could take a historical situation and address it with compact and extremely potent verse and give us a fantastically compelling human drama,” said Supple. He added that Marylebone theatre, which sits just over 200 people, is “small enough to be intimate and large enough to deal with subjects of scale”.
The artistic director of Marylebone theatre, and dramaturg of Dmitry, is Alexander Gifford. The actor Mark Rylance, who is among its patrons, said he supported the theatre’s plans for “fostering a renaissance in verse drama”. Rylance’s late step-daughter, Nataasha van Kampen, attended a Rudolf Steiner school in north London. Rudolf Steiner House was built between 1926 and 1937 as the British home of the Anthroposophical Society, founded to further the work of the “spiritual scientist” Steiner.
