By Jonathan Grant

When someone feels that they have a task as laborious and meaningless as that of Sisyphus, perhaps they have a right to feel melancholy. Indeed, when that person has their fated love chosen for them, they can feel disempowered and hopeless.

Yet, when that “one” is the romantic Prince of Popo, and he is being accompanied by such a starry-eyed and lyrically swashbuckling companion as Valerio, then spirits can only rise. This is the set-up in Lydia Ziemke’s reinterpretation of Georg Buchner’s satirical play Leonce and Lena, which has just opened at the Tabard Theatre in Turnham Green.

As Prince Leonce and his compatriot Valerio embark on their quest for love and the meaning of life, they cut through many of the duchies, principalities and other small “onion states” that have long since disappeared from the European map. Much like that early 19th-century map of Europe, Ziemke’s adaptation is full of quaint arrangements that make the multi-faceted scenes, from melancholic to comic, in the hunt for “Destination True Love” thoroughly enjoyable and alive.

Sign-posting the action with comic interludes from the senile King of Popo and his sycophant advisors, Ziemke keeps the performance fresh and relevant to today’s world, when, at times, the complexity of the language and the depth of the subject matter could quite easily have taken its toll in a non-stop 90-minute piece.

Immersed in the spirit of Kant and Schopenhauer, repeatedly called the most pessimistic of all philosophers, the often dark satire springs to life in the most unexpectedly comic moments, aided with the humorous grace of a well-cast ensemble awash with talent. Buchner’s original play acutely lampooned the society he shunned: its ineffectual rules, the puppet court, and concerns about the effects this had on the “real people”.

Similarly, through well-timed turns from the fabulously senile King Peter (David Morley-Hale), his dry-witted Minister (Will Tosh), and the charismatic Valerio (Will Beer), we find many a moment to reflect on the ways in which the excesses of power are objectionable and ridiculous.

Cross, as Leonce, deserves a particular mention. As the self-obsessed Crown Prince, he grabs the audience, holding their attention for the best part of an hour and a half as he stomps from one hissy fit to the next. Yet he shakes out their emotions until the audience is positively willing him to succeed

Yet, as he meets Lena (Donmall) and her Governess (Fiore), whose footsteps on the journey to love and happiness seem to have trod a remarkably similar path, will the Road to Devotion be an easy one? The audience are left in some doubt as masked automatons, existentialist robots, turn up at the wedding….

Embellished with beautiful turns of phrase, delivered with the clarity of winter air, Leonce and Lena is a production that, though on a limited budget, does not cut corners. The costumes all seem fitting to the period and the set is ample with one cloth prop throughout and a velvet backdrop because of the clever use made of it – proving that less can truly be more.

One criticism: this mantra of less is more might have been applied to the script, which at times could have been trimmed to be snappier and more effective. The best-delivered, and most-enjoyable, lines were those that did not overshoot their full stops.

All in all, however, much like our masked automatons, this is a striking play with many faces. It is a “songbird to listen to” and “the bumblebee clinging to the flower” to watch. Truly a new flowering for an old classic.

The production continues at the Tabard Theatre, with online booking, until February 11.