Arinzé Kene Commands Brighton Dome in Kohlhaas
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- Arinzé Kene plays Michael Kohlhaas, a 16th-century horse-dealer who, after a baron steals two of his prized stallions, exhausts every legal route before resorting to violence against a corrupt aristocratic system, in a 90-minute production at Brighton Dome.
- Omar Elerian directs a monologue-form adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's novella — itself based on a real-life case — with a script by Marco Baliani and Remo Rostagno, translated by Elerian, peeling away the original's extraneous detail.
- Ana Inés Jabares-Pita's set centers on a circular dais surrounded by razed terrain of ashes, with fire and lightning flashing across the stage to mirror the corruption of God's order in Kohlhaas's world.
- Matthew Herbert provides compositions and sound design alongside Dan Pollard (dread notes, pounding hooves), while Jackie Shemesh's lighting alternately bathes, spotlights, or blackens the stage to build palpable drama.
- Unlike von Kleist's original, the production leaves Kohlhaas un-honoured at the close, keeping the question open: at what point does the pursuit of justice tip into a desire for revenge, and does violent protest spawn its own injustices?
- The reviewer calls the show 'awe-inspiring' and 'stupendously directed,' framing it as both a parable about the cost of activism and an enchanting Homeric story of a man conjuring an entire world from inside an empty circle.
Why it matters: By stripping Heinrich von Kleist's 19th-century German novella down to monologue form and stripping away its redemptive ending, director Omar Elerian turns Kohlhaas into an unsettled contemporary parable — one that, the reviewer argues, lands with fresh force in an era of protest and disillusionment with institutional remedies.
