Richard Coyle Photos Richard Coyle is Don Carlos, the idealist prince struggling against his father, King Philip II of Spain, in the play now at the Gielgud Theatre in London. Click photo for larger image.

LONDON -- Looking back from abroad can give you a sobering view of what you might not see so well at home. Take London theater, where America is a vivid presence, whether in American plays that gain new clarity from displacement eastward, or in English plays engaged with the long shadow America throws in the current world.

For an example of the first, there's "American Anthems" by CMU grad Dennis McIntyre, in which Kevin Spacey plays an angry man from Pittsburgh, the subject of my next review. For the English view, there's "Stuff Happens," David Hare's take on the Bush administration and its war on Iraq, unfortunately out of the National Theatre repertory at present.

But this insight gained from displacement operates in classic plays, too. Today's example is Friedrich Schiller's 1784 tragedy, "Don Carlos," a speculation on the late 16th-century Spanish monarchy that holds a lurid mirror up to the power politics of the present.

"Don Carlos" is a tragedy of family and empire, at times like "Hamlet." The title character is a charismatic prince in rebellion against his autocratic father, King Philip II of Spain. His rebellion is political, in sympathy with the king's freedom-seeking Protestant subjects in the Netherlands, but also more generally ideological, opposing the oppressive conformity and religiosity of Philip's court, and personal, since Philip has himself married the French princess who had been betrothed to Don Carlos.

In hindsight, we understand Don Carlos as a romantic hero before his time, an apostle of individuality at a time when orthodoxy is rigid with antiquity and fear of change. Don Carlos also shares Hamlet's inability to act, surrounded as he is by royal spies and torn by thwarted love. So the political and personal parallel and war with each other. But while "Hamlet" ultimately feels more personal than political, "Don Carlos" feels more political, because Schiller gives greater weight to the intransigent king and to the driving force of the Holy Inquisition.

And here's where this "Don Carlos," though scrupulously set in Philip's 16th-century world of dynastic, national and religious intrigue, seems purposefully written about today. The Protestant Reformation has sparked a militant Catholic counter-reformation; the Spanish empire feels itself threatened; holy war rages.

	In "Don Carlos," Derek Jacobi is the autocratic King Philip II, whose empire is caught in the fight between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic counter-reformation. Click photo for larger image.

So everywhere you see the self-serving conviction of good intentions used to justify bad means. Even religious figures are ready to excuse adultery or murder in defense of the power of the church, and the king frankly adopts terror as a necessary instrument of government.

This ideological vanity is palpable from the start, with the stage drenched in the odor of sanctity by a giant censer. Michael Grandage's powerful staging relies heavily on Paule Constable's lighting, with its brilliant shafts, misty curtains, dazzling auras and luminous gloom, all emblematic of the secrets and power shifts of the imperial court.

Out of the gloom strides the ferocious Philip of Derek Jacobi and the hard men of his court. Philip's greatest danger is not his weak son but the Marquis of Posa (Elliot Cowan), the prince's friend and a secret revolutionary. Achieving sudden influence over the king, he risks it on a power play that depends on a resolve Don Carlos does not share. Then at the climax, a briefly vulnerable Philip is thundered back into line by the Grand Inquisitor (Peter Eyre) in as chilling an exercise of theocratic Realpolitik as the stage affords.

As the courtiers invoke external peril to justify draconian measures, it's impossible not to see them as versions of Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rove. By this reading, Don Carlos is the impotent Democratic Party, full of earnest intention, stymied by indecision. But his ally, Posa, makes the same mistake as his enemies, overreaching out of his own conviction of virtue. Even in a reading such as this, it's hard to see King Philip as President Bush, but of course this is no specific allegory, just a study of the danger of believing oneself divinely appointed to save others from themselves.

Rumbling with fierce debate about ideology and truth, staged with thunderclap precision and melodramatic intensity, it's the best political theater I've seen in this past political year -- so much crisper and more engaging than Michael Blakemore's earnest but static "Democracy," for example.

And it's not just about America, though it's natural that one's national self-consciousness should rise with distance from home. A Russian or South African or Italian should see reflections, too -- anywhere national emergency is invoked to defend privilege or the status quo. That's what makes a classic play classic.

"Don Carlos" is at the Gielgud Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, through April 30.