RSC Friends

Alex Hassell’s Henry V is a king tortured by doubts about the legitimacy of his crown and of the war he is about to wage against France. He is persuaded of the justice of his cause by clerics who are mainly interested in safeguarding the Church’s wealth and power. The  compromises that challenge the king’s attempts to rouse his troops to greater acts of savagery whilst attempting to fight a just war constantly bubble up beneath the surface of the play.

This is an absorbing and fascinating production. The darkness of the central themes lightened by some great comic moments featuring a garrulous Welshman, a reckless Irishman and an incomprehensible Scot. Interesting that Shakespeare was alive to the comic possibilities of English cultural stereotyping. Meanwhile, John Falstaff’s old friends Bardolph, Pistol, and Nym provide an hilarious and decidedly off message take on the whole business of going to war. The scepticism of the common soldiery is captured so well in the disguised king’s conversation, on the eve of Agincourt, with the choleric and cynical Bates who observes that it is the common soldiers get killed while kings are merely ransomed. Henry struggles to convince him otherwise.

There is much else that deserves praise in this production. Oliver Ford Davies, as Chorus, moves the action along briskly and raises  the audience from any danger of torpor by demanding that we use our imaginations.  Jennifer Kirby is both witty and commanding as Princess Katherine attempting to learn English from her ladies in waiting, whilst Jane Laportaire is formidable as the distressed Queen of France as she mourns the destruction wrought on her country.

The music and light projections give just the right amount of context to an appropriately austere stage. A ‘must see’ production.

Photograph by Keith Pattison.