Banishing John Falstaff

Henry IV Part One, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 3 May 2014

The production began on a very sombre note in a candle-lit chapel with Henry (Jasper Britton) prostrated before a large crucifix (1.1). As he began his complaint, the distinctive figure of Richard II appeared briefly on the stage left balcony, indicating that the source of Henry’s malaise was his guilt at usurping his predecessor. This also implied that his self-characterisation as “shaken” referred to his bad conscience about Richard rather than the “civil broils” that were his immediate concern. Henry was immediately brought to our attention as psychologically complex and with depth of feeling and conscience.

However, over in the Prince’s apartment the mood was somewhat different (1.2). The dark chamber contained a large bed, on which Hal (Alex Hassell) bade goodbye to two wenches who had just finished servicing him. One was already visible sat astride him, while a second emerged from under the sheets. Hal went to open the chamber shutters, the sudden noise of which woke Falstaff (Antony Sher), who popped up from under the bedclothes at the foot of the bed. This sudden intrusion of daylight prompted Falstaff’s question about the time of day and his insistence that he was one of the “gentlemen of the shade” rather than a daytime person. Hal opened the window and eventually put a shirt on.

Antony Sher’s Falstaff sounded like the kind of upper-middle class gentleman that haunts the expensive seats at the RSC. It was possible to imagine him preparing for the role by drawing on decades of memories of rubbing shoulders with the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire bourgeoisie.

With the arrival of Poins (Sam Marks), the three agreed to rob at Gad’s Hill (pronounced “Gade’s Hill”). Hal was very excitable throughout the conversation but this changed when he was left alone at the end of the scene.

Hal’s soliloquy was framed in dramatic spotlight centre stage as he addressed the audience in a particularly portentous way with his master plan to live dissolutely and then abruptly revert to virtue. This was first indication of the emphasis that Part One would place on Hal’s change of attitude to Falstaff, together with Hal’s general transformation. Rather than an explanatory footnote to the scene, the speech was a foreboding of dark events to come.

Henry met with the rebels (1.3). The staging emphasised royal power with Henry facing the audience sat on the throne backed by his supporters while the northern insurrectionists kneeled before him. This created an obvious imbalance of status and power quite unlike the semicircle of chairs used in the Globe production.

The bleached blonde Hotspur (Trevor White) immediately looked like trouble. Anger and aggression boiled to the surface. A letter was thrown back into Hotspur’s face and the king rudely shouted at him that he did “belie” Mortimer.

This roughness and tension continued once Hotspur was alone with his relatives. When Hotspur would not stop talking he was wrestled to ground, forcing from him an apology “Good uncle, tell your tale; I have done”. Hotspur insisted on pursuing a course of revenge until he was pulled by the hair on the back of the head and told by Worcester (Antony Byrne) to follow his letter-borne instruction.

The action switched to Rochester as the carriers (Nicholas Gerard-Martin & Robert Gilbert) gathered in the darkness with their lanterns (2.1). A neat piece of technology allowed the turkeys inside their baskets to make realistic gobbling noises. The character usually known as Gadshill was here called Rakehell (Jonny Glynn) and received confirmation from the Chamberlain (Simon Yadoo) of the movements of the intended targets of the robbery.

The more active robbers ran around hiding from Falstaff and teasing him as the heist was prepared (2.2). Hal fell to the ground to listen for approach of the victims, prompting Falstaff’s joke about the levers that would be required to lift him from that position.

The nuns and the carriers were assaulted. The robbers took the money chest and tried to open it with a hacksaw, while Hal and Poins crept up on them in hoods and facemasks. The robbers were surprised and ran off, with Falstaff not even attempting to fight.

Hotspur was annoyed at a weasel-worded letter refusing him assistance (2.3). He threw it to the ground and shouted at it before being intercepted by Lady Percy (Jennifer Kirby). She was a good match for her husband, with the vague air of a tough man’s wife.

She wanted to know why he had been ignoring her. He began to leave but turned back when she mentioned that she had watched over him while he was asleep. She continued to talk sweetly to him and he almost fell for her charms, but then suddenly pulled away to question a servant.

Lady Percy then tried a more direct physical approach and went to grab his little finger, but he wrenched her arm and forced her to the ground, so that she was lying there when she asked him “Do you not love me?” He responded to this by picking her up and holding her aloft with one arm.

The Eastcheap set (and those of other locations) slid sideways onto the stage rather than using the basement trap doors (2.4). This was to make them compatible with the Barbican theatre and other touring venues. It seems that the RST has been fitted with basements and fly towers that cannot be used with its major productions that transfer to London and beyond.

Hal told Poins about his mixing with the common people, whom he jokingly referred to as “Tom, Dick (Harry) and Francis”, the extra name being thrown in case we had not realised what the expression meant.

Returned from his ignominious failure at Gad’s Hill, Falstaff began his fantastical account of the robbery and its aftermath. Hal raised a drink in cheers to the audience, indicating that he would indeed contradict Falstaff’s story for our imminent amusement. Hal stood on the money box to demand Falstaff’s excuse for his arrant lying.

Doll (Nia Gwynne) was present in Eastcheap in Part One, and touched Falstaff affectionately on occasions, preparing us for the full display of their relationship in Part Two.

Moving on to the play extempore, a chair was placed on a table to serve as a throne, while another chair was placed on a table just opposite. Falstaff repeatedly asked if Hal was afraid of the impending fight with the rebels and repeatedly put his hand on Hal’s shoulder, which the prince brushed off.

The comical role play between Falstaff and Hal moved to portentous conclusion. Hal said of Falstaff’s banishment “I do; I will”. At first he was jovial, but then placed his hands firmly on the armrests of the chair and appeared to have a change of heart, brushing a hand through his hair as if regretting his pronouncement. This was followed by Macbeth-like banging at the door.

Hal slapped the Chief Justice (Simon Thorp) when he came looking for Falstaff and Bardolph (Joshua Richards). This served to underline the animosity between the two. This invented business was included because of the subsequent references to the assault in Part Two.

Over in Wales, Hotspur thought he had forgotten the map on which the rebels were to divide their spoils, but Glendower (Joshua Richards) had pulled the huge map in behind him as he entered (3.1).

Glendower looked and sounded just like Sam Cairns’ version of the character at the Globe in 2010.

The King had summoned Hal for a serious talk (3.2). Hal began his excuses for his behaviour, but was pulled by the ear by the King towards the chapel kneeling pad. This marked the turning point at which Hal realised exactly how seriously his father took the issue of his behaviour. If the idea was latent when he had spoken to us earlier in soliloquy, this was the moment that he decided to act on his intentions.

In Eastcheap, Falstaff emptied dregs from abandoned cups into his own, displaying mild signs of delirium tremens (3.3). The speech in which Falstaff described his virtue but ironically undercut each statement with a humorous caveat was here divided between Falstaff and Bardolph so that his companion was the source of the more honest version rather than Falstaff himself. The advantage of this staging was questionable.

A running joke extended across both productions in which all references and allusions to Quickly’s husband and her married status were followed by communal coughing. In Part Two this accompanied references to Quickly (Paola Dionisotti) being a widow.

The inconsistency of the production’s modernisation of language could be seen in the way that the reference to “dowlas” was changed to “muslin”, but the price reference “eight shillings an ell” was left in. An audience trusted to work out that an “ell” is a unit of length could also be trusted to determine that dowlas was a cheap fabric.

Despite his realisation in the previous scene that his relationship with Falstaff had to change, Hal was here still in a good mood with Falstaff as he gave him his battle orders.

Falstaff’s last words in the scene “I could wish this tavern were my drum” were rounded off with the sound of drums heralding the entry of the more reliably martial Douglas (Sean Chapman) and Hotspur (4.1).

Hotspur continued his manic preparations for war brushing aside any concerns that their forces were underpowered.

On his way to fight the rebels, Falstaff asked Bardolph to fill a bottle of sack for him, which when handed over was seen to be comically enormous (4.2).

In an initial sign of his displeasure with Falstaff, Hal was visibly appalled at the condition of his pressed soldiers. Hal could also be seen taking exception to Falstaff’s callous attitude to these men deemed merely “food for powder”.

Hotspur was still raring to attack the King’s forces (4.3). Blount (Simon Thorp) brought an offer of pardon but Hotspur responded by lecturing him at length about the severity of their grievances.

Blount asked “Shall I return this answer to the King?” In a clever tweaking of the text, the following lines, in which Hotspur appears to relent “Not so, Sir Walter. We’ll withdraw awhile”, were given to Worcester. The sequence turned into Worcester being conciliatory, holding back Hotspur and calming his rage, while the young rebel continued to glower with frustrated anger.

This created consistency. Given how eager Hotspur was, the text’s version in which he made the concession looked out of character. It also created a parallel with events in the next scene.

At Shrewsbury Worcester met with the King and his party, including Hal (5.1). In a parallel with the Hotspur/Worcester sequence in 4.3, the King had to restrain Hal from offering to fight with Hotspur in single combat.

Hal showed a new censoriousness towards Falstaff by ordering him to be quiet and refrain from his inappropriate wisecracks. This textual indication of Hal’s changed attitude fitted in well with the other more subtle indications of Hal’s transformation created by directorial decisions.

Hal maintained that the peace offer would not be accepted, exuding an air of foreboding and intimating that the King’s judgment was wrong.

Given his previous pronouncements it was possible to detect some wishful thinking in Hal’s parting words to Falstaff: “Say thy prayers, and farewell” and “Why, thou owest God a death”. His wish was truly father to those thoughts.

This led into Falstaff’s “honour” soliloquy in which he showed us the scutcheon on his buckler to illustrate one of his metaphors.

Worcester decided not to tell Hotspur about the peace offer, realising that the King would inevitably find a way to punish their disobedience (5.2). Hotspur predictably whooped with delight when he heard that the fight was on.

In the midst of the raging battle a desperate Hal asked to borrow Falstaff’s sword (5.3). He offered him his pistol instead, handing over a leather container. Hal discovered that it held yet another bottle of sack, which he angrily discarded, building on his previous animosity to become truly outraged at Falstaff’s inappropriate antics.

Douglas fought the King to the ground, but Hal rushed in to stand over his father, threatening the Scot with his sword, after which Douglas skulked away (5.4).

There was a fantastically fast double sword fight between Hal and Hotspur. Hal lost both his swords and ended up defending himself with his buckler. He regained a sword and was given a second one, continuing to fight without a buckler. Hal eventually dealt Hotspur fatal blows to the stomach. Just before, Falstaff had apparently been cut down upstage and was lying motionless.

Hal honoured Hotspur in death, holding his sword hilt over him and paying him his due respects. Then Hal found Falstaff and did the same but with a subtly different emphasis.

Hal’s contemplation of the supposedly dead Falstaff culminated in him raising his sword over his body, looking as if he would honour Falstaff with praises as he had just done with Hotspur. But he hinted that he was not displeased to see his companion dead, saying: “O, I should have a heavy miss of thee if I were much in love with vanity”, which was crucially caveated; speaking of the battle dead he referred to those other than Falstaff as the “many dearer”.

This was undercut when Falstaff rose up. At first he struggled to right himself, wobbling like beetle on its back. When Hal saw Falstaff alive he took a step backwards in shock and pointed his sword at him as if he were a demonic illusion. Hal ordered Falstaff to carry Douglas away on his back.

This was a very interesting trajectory for the Hal/Falstaff relationship because it effectively cleared the way for the friendlier rapport between them at the start of Part Two.

The concluding scene saw a large map spread out on the stage on which the King, victorious over his immediate enemies, was planning his further campaigns against the rebels (5.5).

 

Henry IV Part Two, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 3 May 2014

The “switch off phones” announcement merged into an exhortation to “Switch off your phone… open your ears”, the latter phrase being the first three words of the Induction to Part Two. The remainder was spoken by the character of Rumour (Antony Byrne), a man looking like a member of the stage crew complete with a Rolling Stones tongue logo t-shirt, picking up on the line “upon my tongues continual slanders ride”.

Rumour used his phone to photograph the audience and the set, then began his speech as multiple copies of the #rumour hashtag were projected onto the back wall, establishing a connection between traditional rumour mill and contemporary social media. The phrase “Open your ears” was also flashed across it and spoken in several languages.

After Northumberland (Sean Chapman) had digested the news of his faction’s defeat and the death of Hotspur (1.1), the mood and location changed.

Falstaff was proudly displaying the medal he had won for his services at Shrewsbury when his Page returned with his water pot (1.2). The boy was very small, justifying Falstaff’s description of him as “fitter to be worn in my cap”. The Page mentioned that Hal had struck the Lord Chief Justice, which to create consistency across the productions had been shown in Part One.

Sher continued his impression of the kind of upper middle class gent so common in the audience at Stratford.

The boring, featureless exposition of 1.3 quickly gave way to some more London-based comedy as Quickly gave Fang (Youssef Kerkour) and Snare (Martin Bassindale) their last-minute instructions about arresting Falstaff (2.1).

There was a brilliant moment of textual awareness. Mistress Quickly mentioned in all innocence her “case so openly known to the world” upon which Fang and Snare each gave a brief downward glance to bring out the sex joke in that line. In keeping with that theme, Quickly was also referred to as “Quick Lay”.

The fight in which Fang and Snare failed to detain Falstaff was not very convincing and was interrupted by the arrival of the Chief Justice, the ensuing dealings with Quickly providing another outing for the running joke about her marriage, this time with everyone coughing at her being a “poor widow”.

Hal and Poins returned from playing tennis and stood around shirtless for a while before getting dressed (2.2). Hal’s reminder of a point already made briefly by Falstaff, that the Page had been a gift from Hal to him, was a sign that their friendship had been rekindled. But the first mention of Falstaff’s name caused Hal to look down at the ground grimly, hinting that all was not completely well.

The arrival of Bardolph and the Page was the occasion of some more winsome child acting. Bardolph was paid money for his silence about Hal and Poins’ trick on Falstaff, but the Page stole the cash and ran off, turning his last phrase in the scene “I will govern it” into his bold statement as he snatched the money bag away from his companion.

The scene showing Lady Percy’s misgivings about Northumberland’s intention to return to war was remarkable for the fact that Nia Gwynne (Doll Tearsheet) played Lady Northumberland in a change to the usual doubling of this role with Mistress Quickly (2.3).

The action returned to Eastcheap, where once again Francis (Elliot Barnes-Worrell) popped up out of the trap door hatch, calling “anon anon, Sir!” to an impatient, unseen customer (2.4).

The private room where Falstaff was being entertained was laid out on a small platform. This looked like another concession to the requirements of touring the production. On first sight, it looked cramped and would prove so later on. The confinement of the scene’s action within such a small space on the large RST thrust looked very odd.

Nia Gwynne’s Doll was sick into a bowl and comforted by Quickly. Falstaff insisted that Pistol (Antony Byrne) be admitted, confirming “It is mine ensign” rather than “ancient”.

Pistol was wide-eyed and with his hair on end to create an alarming look. He entered with a bang as his pistols went off and engaged in his sexual innuendoes.

Doll forced Pistol down onto the ground, but he soon overcame, putting a knife to her throat exclaiming “Have we not Hiren here?”

Seeing that Doll was in danger, Quickly disarmed him as he commented “These be good humours”. Pistol went from the threatening to the ridiculous. He dropped his trousers and after Doll suggested he should be thrust downstairs, he lewdly asked “Thrust him? Downstairs?” looking at his bulging underpant codpiece.

Pistol wrapped the Eastcheap crew up in a curtain and pulled on it like reins to curb them like “pampered jades of Asia” before being forced out the back of the small set.

Doll questioned Falstaff about Hal and Poins: each of them popped their head up over the rear curtain when mentioned.

They eventually played their trick by pretending to be servers. The first meeting between Hal and Falstaff contained a slight undercurrent of animosity, but nothing to overt dislike on Hal’s part.

Falstaff was called to the court and left the room platform, but paused on the main stage to cry silently with his face in his hand, an extratextual moment. Bardolph saw this and returned to the room to fetch Doll, which is part of the text. She comforted Falstaff in his distress, providing additional weight to the tenderness of their relationship as well as highlighting the vulnerability behind Falstaff’s boasting. The whole sequence provided a neat explanation for Doll’s summons.

Mistress Quickly fell asleep in a chair and the room fell dark and silent.

The third act followed on seamlessly from the previous scene. Wrapped in a dark sheet and looking distinctly unwell, the King entered through the back of the Eastcheap platform as Quickly dozed. His lines to the Page cut.

Henry entered the world of Eastcheap so that when he spoke to us saying “How many thousand of my poorest subjects are at this hour asleep!” he was able to point to Quickly as an example as she snored.

The King walked off the front of the platform to move downstage, which differentiated him from the others who had all left the room through its back door. This suggested that his presence here was illusory: that he was theatrically but not physically inside an Eastcheap tavern.

The interval came at the end of the scene after the King had spoken with Warwick and Surrey about defeating the rebels.

The second half began in Gloucestershire, the refreshed audience encountering the delightful Oliver Ford Davies as Shadow conversing with Silence (3.2). Silence (Jim Hooper) was wearing mittens like a child and was equally childlike in his ignorance, or rather forgetfulness. Shadow asked various questions about their mutual friends and relations, but senescent Silence did not seem to know whom he was talking about.

There was a running gag involving Shadow’s leg shaking whenever he became excited. He first began to tremble when reminiscing about the “bona robas” of his student days, and subsequently when remembering Jane Nightwork a little while after.

The pressed men appeared: Mouldy (Simon Yadoo) was diseased, Wart (Leigh Quinn) crept along the ground and Bullcalf (Youssef Kerkour) was predictably big.

In another annoying textual change, Mouldy said “If it please you” rather than the equally comprehensible “an’t”. If a production starts running scared of the language, then where does it stop?

Bullcalf’s self-correction of his illness from “cold” to “cough” was made to sound like the actor correcting a misremembered line, an effect that was cleverly rendered.

Falstaff managed to leverage the full quotient of innuendo from his exhortation “No more of that Master Shallow…”

Wart was given a gun but could barely hold it upright. Shadow demonstrated its correct use and charged around brandishing it threateningly, ending his display of martial prowess by striking the butt firmly on the ground, at which point the gun went off.

Falstaff communed with the audience, telling us about Shadow’s youth when he was known as “Mandrake”, a remark which prompted a ripple of laughter that Falstaff gratefully acknowledged. He appeared to have found the audience’s level when they snickered at his comment that “he came ever in the rearward of the fashion” with more chortling and Falstaff relishing his apparently unintended double entendre.

Westmoreland (Youssef Kerkour) tricked the rebels into thinking their demands had been met and that they had won (4.1), only for John of Lancaster (Elliot Barnes-Worrell) to confirm the deal, watch the rebel army disperse, and then arrest the traitors (4.2).

Coalville (Robert Gilbert) had been mentioned by name in an earlier scene to give more credence to his sudden appearance in 4.3 as Falstaff helped mop up the remainders of the fleeing rebel forces.

Falstaff called out after the departing John of Lancaster “I would you had but the wit”, making plain his dislike of Hal’s cold-blooded sibling.

This thought led Falstaff into his great paean to sack and its warming, inflammatory effects. He took a deep draught from a clay pot before expounding on each element of its “twofold operation”.

Antony Sher revelled in exploring the physicality of Falstaff’s reaction to sherry. This portrayal was different to that given by Roger Allam in the Globe version, which was slightly more clinical.

The text’s “sherris” was emended rather disappointingly to “sherry”. Sherry is something that is drunk at Christmas, usually in a modest, restrained way. Gourmand Falstaff should really drink something more exotic and tinged with his characteristic wildness, and the word “sherris” fits the bill perfectly.

To add insult to injury, the culmination of Falstaff’s fine speech was also pinched and clipped to deprive it of its full glory. We were left with:

If I had a thousand sons, the first [humane] principle I would teach them should be to [forswear thin potations, and to] addict themselves to sack”.

A beautifully balanced phrase was spoilt by the clumsy hand of the editor.

The King looked very ill and was helped in by his entourage. His surprising reaction on hearing the good news of the rebels’ defeat was to collapse sideways, before being carried to rest in another chamber (4.4).

The King was put to bed with the crown next to him (4.5). The scene provided an efficient but predictable staging of Hal’s appropriation of the crown and his subsequent contrition.

Shallow continued to entertain Falstaff and friends (5.1). Shallow’s repetition of “no excuse” was accompanied by the repeated unloading of money bags, presumably either their pay for recruiting men or bribes paid to them to be excused from military service.

News that the King had “walked the way of nature” was soon followed by the new king being revealed on his throne (5.2). This dramatic reveal was very effective, much more so than having him walk onstage. The text added a reference to the Chief Justice being assaulted: he stated that Hal had “struck me in an Eastcheap tavern” rather than the original “my very seat of judgment”.

Mad Pistol delivered the news of Hal’s accession which was received with great joy by Falstaff (5.3). There was a touching moment at the end of the scene once the stage had emptied of those keen to get to London, Pistol sat with Silence and began to sing “Where is the life that late I led?” and Silence, who had previously been on good singing form, joined in with him.

The arresting officers crudely snatched and discarded the red cushion that Doll had stuffed up her dress to fake a pregnancy and thus escape the law (5.4).

Falstaff readied himself centre stage as the regal procession entered via the stage right walkway and proceeded upstage (5.5). The King entered and walked on past the entreating Falstaff, but then turned round, looked back at his old friend and denounced him. Falstaff showed no sign of upset or shock. Possibly this was recognition and he was just saving face in front of the others.

As we were left to take in the culmination of the subplot, the Page wandered onstage at the end as the lights went down.

Conclusions

The overall trajectory of the Hal/Falstaff relationship was determined by the relative lack of interaction between them in Part Two, so that Hal’s overt statements in Part One were heavily reinforced by subtle hints throughout both parts, preparing the way for his renunciation of Falstaff at the end of the second instalment.

Neither production made use of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre’s fly tower or basement lift, possibly to facilitate Barbican transfer. If this is to be the pattern for major productions, which have to fit the Barbican, then what was the point of these impressive capabilities?

Absolute beginners

Hamlet, Middle Temple Hall, 19 April 2014 & The Globe, 26 April 2014

Before setting off round the world, the Globe’s touring production of Hamlet played at two very different venues: Middle Temple Hall (tickets £50) and The Globe itself (tickets from £5).

Middle Temple Hall is one of only two extant Shakespearean performance spaces, the other being Hampton Court Palace, so any performance of Shakespeare there is a special event.

The basic touring set was implanted in both spaces: a backcloth hung from a metal framework together with packing cases and planks. At Middle Temple Hall it was performed on a wooden platform. When transferred to the Globe, the outline of this platform was marked on its stage. All of this was good practice for the various conditions they would encounter on their journey.

The performance began with a rousing song about beggars, with the cast accompanying themselves on instruments, which were also used for the incidental music. This was a reminder of how touring companies were often considered little better than beggars unless they could demonstrate noble patronage. This beggars song was also played when the Mousetrap company arrived within the play, further underscoring that connection.

The text drew heavily on the First Quarto (Q1), a short version of Hamlet possibly deriving from a touring version of the play, making its use here another nod to the original touring tradition.

The Q1 borrowings caused Polonius (Rãwiri Paratene) to say that one might “find directions forth”; Claudius (John Dougall) used the word “swoopstake-like” and concluded his meditation on his crimes with “No King on earth is safe, if God’s his foe”. The Gravediggers spoke of the grave as a “long house” and of water as a “parlous devourer” of bodies.

The most extensive Q1 borrowing was an entire speech unique to that version about “warm clowns” and the various ways in which they speak more than is set down for them in a play text. And as if to demonstrate that point the Gravedigger did indeed launch into a non-textual but semi-scripted modern English digression when he first appeared. At Middle Temple Hall, Dickon Tyrrell told a joke about booking a holiday and being asked “Eurostar?” and replying “Well, I’ve played a few seasons on the Globe”. This perhaps approximated to the way that the original clowns in these parts did branch off into their own comic routines.

The battlements of Elsinore were suggested by planks arranged into a V-shape pointing towards the audience. The ground further off where Hamlet first met the Ghost was indicated by the same planks sloping down to the ground from the tops of packing cases.

In another self-referential detail, the travelling players called themselves “Two Planks and a Passion”, which would also have made an apt name for the Globe company.

Despite its basic set, the production managed a coup-de-théâtre during the Mousetrap sequence. After a dumbshow set to a rumba rhythm, a curtain was drawn across the stage from behind which the Claudius and Gertrude (Miranda Foster) changed costumes and emerged as the Player King and Queen to act out their scene. After the repeated references to the remarriage of widows, the curtain was closed once again, only to open moments later to reveal a stony-faced Claudius sitting with Gertrude, the same bench serving sequentially as both Mousetrap stage and Mousetrap audience seating.

But this was followed by an even neater trick; the Player King reclined on his side facing away from the audience as the wicked usurper poured poison in his ear. As the direct parallels with Claudius became very apparent he stormed onto the stage from the front calling for lights. This came as a complete surprise because we had been tricked into thinking John Dougall was still on stage.

In addition to the doubling of their roles, the First Player’s connection with Claudius was also emphasised when the actor recited a speech about the Trojan War, at one point describing how Pyrrhus had tried to strike at Priam, but simply stood “And like a neutral to his will and matter, did nothing.” He spoke that phrase staring fixedly at Hamlet and it was as if Claudius were taunting him with his own inaction.

This Hamlet really did consider that his advice to the players was important. When the Player Queen was on stage, Hamlet (Naeem Hayat) stood just to her side trying in vain to restrain her from sawing the air too much with her hands.

The final scene was notable for two things: it showed Claudius handing the cup he had just poisoned almost absent-mindedly to a servant and Gertrude intercepting it before it had reached safety. Secondly, when Horatio tried to join Hamlet by drinking the dregs of the poison, Hamlet snatched it from him and downed the remainder himself, perhaps in an attempt to ensure there was none left to harm his friend.

In its essential elements the production remained constant across the two venues. But the way the production reacted with these two very dissimilar spaces and their audiences meant that the results were different.

At Middle Temple Hall, Hamlet could not resist directing one of the play’s legal jokes out to the audience where distinguished lawyers in dark suits mingled with the slightly less impressive contingent of Globe diehards, one of whom was wearing a replica football shirt.

“Might this not be the skull of a lawyer?” he quipped with a wry smile full of expectation that this might tickle the toes of the assembled advocates. Not a single titter.

The Globe, however, was a completely different proposition. The touring set seemed a natural fit for the partially covered Southwark stage, and close proximity to a standing audience made for a greater level of interaction.

This reviewer decided to take the opportunity to test the proposition that Hamlet’s “Am I a coward?” soliloquy had been written to provide the actor with an inbuilt comeback to heckling provoked by that supposedly rhetorical question. Shared light and the informality of standing in the yard in front of a thrust stage militate in favour of audience participation.

Naeem Hayat crouched close to the ground on the stage right side of the base of the triangular promontory, as he addressed part of his soliloquy to some groundlings directly in front of him. I had a clear view of him from my position where the promontory joined the main stage on the opposite, stage left side.

He calmly asked “Am I a coward?” and left a slight pause of the kind that rhetorical questions require. Mirroring his behaviour I looked straight ahead and snapped “Yes”. He whipped his head round and fixed his fiery gaze on me.

Pausing long enough to position himself with his face a few inches from mine, he launched into the text’s scripted response “Who calls me villain? etc.” His eyes were a mixture of Hamlet’s fury and the actor’s delight at the challenge. I met his gaze, caring little about the flecks of spit on my glasses and steeling myself against the onslaught with the knowledge that however combative he was now, in a few seconds Hamlet was going to concede that I had a point.

“’Swounds, I should take it…” he admitted and began to recoil, almost taken aback that the tramline of the text required him to back away from his tormenter.

The fact that this exchange began when the actor was already engaged with other groundlings, almost having a conversation with them, underlines how readily the Globe promotes this kind of engagement.

Conclusions

The production felt incredibly fresh, as if a ‘new’ play text had been given to a touring company to see what they could do with it. Stripping the Hamlet monster of the expectations generated by 400 years of tradition was liberating.

The frequent use of Q1 text hinted at the economies of touring versions of plays.

Audiences around the world might be surprised at the rustic simplicity of the production, but they will be getting something profoundly authentic.

Reasons for Rosalind

As You Like It, Tobacco Factory Bristol, 22 February 2014

The production was the first to offer seat reservation for the Tobacco Factory theatre’s luxurious new benches. This professional, compact seating installation replaced the previous wooden tiered platforms and plastic chairs, freeing enough space to add an extra 5ft to the width of the performance area.

The costumes were vaguely Victorian, and in 1.1 we met downtrodden Orlando (Jack Wharrier), a slightly bland figure compared with Rosalind and Celia, the production’s main focus of attention, as well as white-whiskered Adam (Paul Nicholson) dressed as a formal retainer.

Because of the hard stone floor, the fight between Orlando and Oliver (Matthew Thomas) was mostly done standing up with Orlando grabbing his opponent by the throat and pressing him against the stage pillar. Orlando pointedly emphasised that his father was called Sir Rowland de Boys, an interesting touch that underlined Orlando’s awareness of his own nobility.

Charles Exposition (Peter Basham) was a London-accented thug wrestler. Oliver was a mildly creepy presence, but his soliloquy at the end of the scene conveyed not so much his character’s villainy but rather his confusion at why he hated his brother: this glimmer of Oliver’s virtuous side prepared us for his conversion to goodness towards the end.

Our first view of the two central female characters showed them languishing in forced leisure and discontent. Celia (Daisy May) practised the violin slowly and deliberately with an air of boredom while Rosalind (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) sat and tried to write in a notebook, intermittently shaking her pen to force ink into the nib (1.2). This was a good piece of economical scene and mood setting.

Touchstone (Vic Llewellyn) was a Victorian music hall comedian, while Monsieur le Beau (Vincenzo Pellegrino) was remarkable for being 6ft 5” tall. The text was cut to remove the obtuse legal joke referencing the phrase “by these presents”.

Duke Frederick (Chris Bianchi) wore a formal black uniform and was surrounded by his courtiers, casually brandishing their brandy glasses, as they looked forward to the wrestling as post-dinner entertainment. A mat was laid onto the floor to make the falls safer.

At their first encounter there was no real sign of any spark between Rosalind and Orlando, and this was possibly justified by the strained situation.

The staged fight ended implausibly with Orlando slamming Charles’ head so it struck the ground stunning him. This was weakest part of the performance, and raised the question whether this had been the only way to stage Orlando’s convincing victory.

Rosalind presented Orlando with a necklace and stood close to him until Celia stretched her hand out and encouraged her to leave. Rosalind took Celia’s hand and walked away with her gaze still fixed on Orlando. But Orlando’s dumbstruck expression was a little too immobile and could have been slightly more animated.

Rosalind returned again to speak with Orlando before finally leaving; it was still obvious that she was in love.

The production went with the “shorter was his daughter” variant for reasons of physiological accuracy.

Rosalind and Celia’s discussion about Orlando began with the delightful spectacle of the pair in their nightgowns lying on the floor of their dimly lit shared bedroom, gabbing about Rosalind’s new fancy (1.3).

They teased and slapped each other playfully before a full-on squee when Rosalind referred obliquely to Orlando as her “child’s father”.

The lights went up as Duke Frederick entered the room accompanied by his goons, suggesting that he had turned on the bedroom lights to compound his rude interruption of their intimacy. Rosalind was ordered to leave the court. She protested bravely, but the Duke grabbed her by the hair and dragged her almost to the floor before she could finish speaking.

The pair made their preparations to set off for Arden and Rosalind shouted offstage, labelling the new Duke as one of many “mannish cowards”.

The order of scenes in act two was rearranged.

Firstly, Adam and Orlando fled the court (2.3). This was followed by our first view of Duke Senior (Chris Bianchi again) and his merry men in their long coats in the forest (2.1).

The doubling of the dukes meant that the transition to 2.2 involved a quick change for Chris Bianchi back into the fiendish Duke Frederick. Hisperia (Hannah Lee) appeared and spoke the words that in the text are merely her reported speech.

The refugees arrived in Arden (2.4). Rosalind, wearing in her flat cap and squeezed into a tweed suit by binding her chest, comforted the weary, straggling Celia. She claimed that “britches” (and not “doublet and hose”) “ought to show itself courageous to petticoat”.

They sat on the stage right pillar to watch Silvius (Ben Tolley) tell Corin (Alan Coveney) of his unrequited love for Phebe. Touchstone’s reminiscing about Jane Smile was illustrated with phallic gestures made with his ukulele case. Rosalind arranged to buy Silvius’ farm and the two women departed, leaving Touchstone to carry all their luggage.

Paul Currier’s Jaques was a bespectacled, bookish, ascetic type (2.5). Not satisfied with Amiens’ (Offue Okegbe) repertoire, he finished scribbling a song in his notebook before tearing out the page to hand it to the musician. The other foresters were sat around in a circle and became the target of the “ducdame” remark, rather than the audience.

The foresters were plunged into darkness, while Adam and Orlando were lit at the stage left side, as the young man promised to find food for his elderly companion (2.6).

The foresters’ camp was bare but effective, with heat from a brazier and real food (2.7).

Orlando rushed in threatening them with his sword but was then horribly embarrassed at it in a very English way when he realised they were civilised men.

Jaques’ seven ages speech began light-heartedly, including when he mocked the “childish treble” of the “slippered pantaloon”, but then veered into a moment of severe gravity when Adam was carried in and held as an exemplar of a man “sans everything”. As with most productions, this one demonstrated that the “hour to hour” joke only works in original pronunciation.

As Adam sat and ate, Amiens and the others sang “Blow, blow, thou winter wind”. Jaques was still in a sulk, so the singers directed “this life is most jolly” pointedly at him, in one of the production’s occasional flashes of inspiration.

A quick change swapped over dukes and Oliver appeared from under a coat as the location instantly flipped back to the court for Oliver’s interrogation about his missing brother (3.1).

Illuminated by pale artificial moonlight to bring out the sequence’s Diana references, Orlando pinned his love verse on a stage pillar (3.2).

Debate

The debate between Corin and Touchstone was underscored by comic business. The clown had some country muck on his shoe, which he tried to clean off unsuccessfully. He took off the shoe and also tried to remove one of his stockings, enlisting an audience member to help. He gave the soiled shoe to Corin, who scraped off the muck with a knife that he then used to cut an apple, offering a slice to Touchstone, who understandably refused.

Rosalind read one of the verses written in her honour, which Touchstone subverted with his bawdy song, getting the audience to join in with the “Rosalind” punchline. But he played a mean trick by pausing for the punchline at “Love’s…”, a gap which the trusting audience filled with “Rosalind” prompting Touchstone’s immediate correction. This audience participation worked very well in Tobacco Factory space.

With Corin and Touchstone gone, Rosalind asked Celia who had written the verses in an upbeat, playful mood that prepared us for the squeal that resulting from the revelation of Orlando’s authorship.

The original line referencing Rosalind’s disguise of doublet and hose was rewritten to “What shall I do with these?”, which felt unnecessary. The audience should be able to ‘get’ that doublet and hose equates to male attire.

Fantasising about a clinch with Orlando, Rosalind squeezed the stage pillar that for her represented “Jove’s tree”.

Rosalind and Celia lay prone on ground to spy on Orlando and Jaques, but this limited their ability to respond and to be seen responding. Orlando teased Jaques with the idea that he would see a fool drowned in the brook, and Jaques’ retort “There I shall see mine own figure” was one of indignant surprise at being so characterised.

Rosalind adopted a male voice to ask Orlando “Do you hear, forester?” as he crouched on the ground. But he showed no particular interest in her. She then asked him “what is’t o’clock?” but his answer “there’s no clock in the forest” was similarly dismissive.

This initial resistance meant that Rosalind’s ensuing anecdote about Time was a desperate attempt to engage his interest. Her flailing efforts to make him notice her added an interesting tension to the sequence. But by the end of the anecdote he was on his feet and absorbing what she had to say.

Rosalind began to relish this attention, so that when Orlando commented on her voice being refined, she exuded a distinct pride as she continued to invent her own backstory involving a religious uncle. This growing confidence fed into her jocular laddish dismissiveness of women.

All this time Celia sat on a chair and looked unimpressed. Orlando revealed that he was the author of the love verse, and after saying that “Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much” he was in love with Rosalind, he turned away. Celia immediately started gesturing at Rosalind to get stuck in, with the implication that Rosalind should throw off her disguise and reveal herself. Rosalind looked back at Celia, paused, reflected, and then continued with “Love is merely a madness…” telling Orlando that she proposed curing love “by counsel”.

This provided a neat explanation for Rosalind does not simply bring the story to a close at this point when she has a clear opportunity. The staging here made it plain that Rosalind was fighting to stay in her adopted character. She had worked hard to attract Orlando’s attention and once she had won it, she was paralysed with fear: staying in character as Ganymede was the easier option.

Rosalind was thoroughly caught up in her own game and departed with Orlando to show him the cote. She called back “Come sister, will you go?” to a stunned Celia who was visibly befuddled by the turn of events. At this point the interval came.

At the start of the second half we were introduced to Touchstone’s paramour Audrey (Hannah Lee again) (3.3). The text was altered so that “Doth my simple feature content you?” was met with “Which feature?” creating a bawdy joke. Touchstone made a point of showing us his reversible jacket which was now turned outwards to display bright red, completing his transfer from court to country.

Martext was played by the tall Vincenzo Pellegrino (same actor as Le Beau) with the added comedy of him trying unsuccessfully to pickpocket Touchstone at the end of the scene. Thieving then became the “calling” out of which he refused to be flouted.

Rosalind and Celia sat in their cote, with Rosalind rocking on her chair playing with a paper salt cellar. She diverted herself from her unhappiness at Orlando’s no-show by gleefully recounting how she had met her father, the old Duke, in her disguise.

At Corin’s bidding they both ran out to see Silvius and Phebe (Sophie Whittaker), who appeared from the main entrance immediately afterwards, changing the central performance area from inside the cote to outside (3.5). The friends watched from the edge.

Once Phebe had fallen for Ganymede, Rosalind hinted at how she was “falser than vows made in wine” by caressing her body, implying that something unexpected lurked underneath her binding.

Jaques was sat waiting for Rosalind in the cote when they arrived back, creating a connection with the previous scene – he had arrived there while they were occupied with Silvius and Phebe (4.1). Rosalind played along and sat at the table opposite him, pouring Jaques a drink as she criticised “drunkards”.

Jaques’ parting shot was changed unnecessarily to refer to “riddles” rather than “blank verse”, an alteration that made absolutely no sense. Rosalind followed him out, addressing her “gondola” remark to his back.

Rosalind was very pained at Orlando’s delayed arrival. Again Celia sat on her chair and commented sarcastically on this game by chipping in “but he hath a Rosalind of a better leer than you”. This was a continuation of Celia’s urging of Rosalind to throw off her disguise and get on with the serious business of introducing herself to Orlando.

With her next words, Rosalind seemed to pick up on and respond to Celia’s urgency. Describing herself as being “in a holiday humour and like enough to consent”, she cast a glance back at Celia that indicated that she had got the point and that also asked Celia whether this change of tack were sufficient.

Rosalind sat at the table opposite Orlando. He insisted that he would “kiss before I spoke” and leant across intending to plant one on her. At this, she rose, fended him off and backed away. But she was not above flirting with Orlando. Insisting that she would not think her “honesty ranker than my wit”, she sashayed and accentuated her hips, bringing out the sensual meaning of “wit”.

Rosalind was completely serious that she would have Orlando “Fridays and Saturdays and all”. But Orlando took offence at Rosalind saying “Ay, and twenty such”, so that the following exchange of short sentences was quizzical and terse.

The mock marriage gave her further encouragement and Rosalind became overly enthusiastic when taking Orlando for her husband. Realising she had caused him embarrassment, she withdrew and apologised for getting ahead of herself.

Her air of skittishness was only increased when she laughed like a hyena during her long list of things she would do once they were married.

Celia scoffed loudly when Orlando said that his Rosalind was wise. This was another facet of Celia’s continuing disapproval of Rosalind’s disguise game. In response, Rosalind glanced at Celia, making her next words “Or else she could not have the wit to do this” an assertion of her cleverness and a justification of the long game she was playing.

Orlando had to leave again for another two hours, causing Rosalind serious upset. By 4.1.176 she could not disguise her disappointment and pleaded with him in a whiny voice not to be late back. Orlando picked up on this and drew close, put his hand on the curve of her hip and looked into her eyes, before checking himself and making yet another embarrassed retreat.

Letter

After the brief scene of the deer hunt (4.2), Rosalind read the letter brought by Silvius from Phebe (4.3).

Oliver’s appearance and rehabilitation was pleasingly credible, building on his initial glimmer of decency to make his present conversion to goodness convincing.

Rosalind fainted backwards on seeing the napkin stained with Orlando’s blood and her cap tumbled off. Oliver pulled her upright and she slumped forwards pressing into him with her chest, which although it was strapped down doubtless made an impression.

She stood in her male attire with her woman’s hair uncovered and gestured with her hand behind her back at Celia, who retrieved Rosalind’s cap and placed it in her grasp, enabling her to reposition it as she dismissed her collapse as counterfeiting. Oliver gave subtle signs that he had seen through Rosalind’s disguise.

Touchstone and Audrey bickered about their failed wedding (5.1). Taking advantage of Audrey’s disenchantment, her old fame William (Peter Basham again) boldly walked up to her, undid his fly and introduced himself. Audrey did not seem to object to this attention, and it was left to Touchstone to intervene and separate the pair with his threats.

Oliver explained to Orlando about his sudden affection for Celia (5.2). He left soon after Rosalind turned up and his farewell “and you, fair sister” verged on a knowing taunt.

Orlando’s arm was not bound in a scarf. He told Rosalind that his brother had imparted “greater wonders than that” in a subtle, but not overt, hint that he knew what was going on.

Orlando did not want to look at happiness through his brother’s eyes. Rosalind shook his hand to part, saying that she would weary him no longer “with idle talking”. But she kept hold of his hand as she began to explain her scheme.

The “What it is to love” sequence was pleasant enough, but could have benefited from some music, which the production had provided at other points.

The musical interlude scene (5.3) contained a running gag continuing the theme of Audrey’s disenchantment with Touchstone and dalliance with William. As the song progressed, Audrey danced ever more lasciviously with William until she ended up straddling him. Touchstone’s closing complaints about the “foolish song” formed a muted criticism of her behaviour.

The wedding guests gathered (5.4). Posing yet more problems for Touchstone, Audrey took advantage of his conversation with the Duke to hitch up her dress slowly, casting enticing oeillades at Orlando, until Touchstone noticed and instructed her to bear her body “more seeming”.

There was another attempt at audience participation that unfortunately fell rather flat. Jaques and Touchstone’s repartee about the seven degrees of the lie concluded with a digression on the word “if”. The word was repeated several times and when it was due for another mention, Touchstone turned to me and paused waiting for me to fill in, much as the whole audience had done when he had played with the name “Rosalind”. He stared for a few seconds, while I returned a blank look, and then continued.

Rosalind, now in her wedding dress, was ushered into the assembled company by Hymen (Offue Okegbe). The reunions were followed by the couples kneeling to have wedding bands wrapped around their hands.

The seeming implausibility of Duke Frederick’s conversion and the restoration of Duke Senior to his rightful place provided an opportunity for the old duke to demonstrate some of the virtue that had made him a good ruler.

Duke Senior could have luxuriated in his restoration. But instead his first action was to approach the elderly Adam and help him to his feet telling the others to “forget this new-fall’n dignity”.

After the rustic revelry dancing, Rosalind and Orlando kissed. The entire cast exited except Rosalind who, realising she was being left alone on stage, followed a little way and called after them “It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue”, as if complaining at being left to perform it. The text was changed from “If I were a woman” to “As I am a woman” and Rosalind, on this occasion, managed to find a man with a beard that pleased her.

Conclusions

This production did a very good job of suggesting a convincing reason why Rosalind does not abandon her disguise on meeting Orlando in the forest.

Once again Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory has delivered a quality product, with the intimacy of the space, the thoughtful direction and accomplished performances all contributing to its value.

 

Downfall

King Lear, Olivier Theatre, 15 February 2014

A blazing sun was projected onto a downstage wall. The moon emerged from nearby clouds, making a slow, relentless progress until it clipped the edge of the solar disc: at the stroke of 7pm the sun was fully eclipsed. This subtle spectacle, an Early Modern countdown clock, created a sense of impending catastrophe and introduced the theme of astrology that would be touched upon later in the play.

A solitary chair faced upstage at the foot of a walkway that extended up the centre aisle as far as row E.

The wall was flown up to reveal three tables arranged in a line across a grey bunker-like room from whose ceiling hung grey metal lampshades (1.1). Director Sam Mendes’ recent movie work invited the comparison with the lair of a Bond villain.

Kent (Stanley Townsend), a large friendly man, spoke with Gloucester (Stephen Boxer), who was smaller and more nervous. Gloucester introduced his son Edmund (Sam Troughton), who in fitting with the Bond set cut a very villainous uptight figure with his formal suit and briefcase.

A large body of dark-uniformed soldiers entered and lined the rear curve of the wall. This armed guard was symptomatic of Lear’s paranoid fear of assassination, of the insecurity that would become the dramatic meat of the story.

The soldiers were followed by the grim-faced couples Goneril (Kate Fleetwood) and Albany (Richard Clothier), Regan (Anna Maxwell Martin) and Cornwall (Michael Nardone). They sat in their respective pairs, elegantly dressed and coiffured, while Cordelia (Olivia Vinall), in a plain dress and with slightly unkempt hair, was positioned at a distance from them on the stage left side. A microphone was placed centrally on each table.

Lear (Simon Russell Beale) wore a black uniform similar to that of his guard, who clicked to attention as he entered. He was short and rotund, and walked leaning forward to indicate a stiffness of back.

The king walked round the end of the table and barked out instructions to Gloucester to attend to France and Burgundy. Lear sat down on the chair, the guard responding by standing at ease. He spoke into the microphone which amplified his voice on stage.

Attendants holding bound maps stood behind the three intended beneficiaries of Lear’s living will. The maps were brandished and held forth when Lear mentioned the division of the kingdom.

Goneril was invited to speak and her husband pushed the microphone across so that she could talk into it. She rose and spoke nervously of her love for Lear, who approached and walked behind her, applauding her as he returned to his seat. On Lear’s cue an attendant placed a bound map in front of her and Albany to show them their lands. Cordelia spoke in spotlight facing the audience. Cornwall pushed the microphone across for Regan, who went one better than Goneril by emerging from behind the huge table to sit on daddy’s lap and kiss him, which he seemed to enjoy. He clapped his chubby little hands together and slapped Regan on the bottom as she turned to go back to her seat.

Cordelia was sat by herself next to a spare chair, which emphasised her isolation and that she had no husband to fight alongside her. The staging emphasised that she was the unmarried freak. The microphone nearest to her was placed centrally between the two chairs and she had to move it herself in order to use it, unlike her sisters whose husbands had performed that task for them. This again subtly pointed to her difference and emphasised that nothing had been done to accommodate her.

She stood to declare her “nothing.” Lear rose astounded and approached her before angrily disclaiming his paternal care.

After Kent’s first intervention Lear shouted at him to “come not between the dragon and his wrath” as he furiously overturned two of the large tables. These were large, heavy tables and slammed loudly on impact with the floor.

Far from being near death, this Lear was still furiously energetic, his present mania foreshadowing future fatal violence. We suddenly understood why the other characters had appeared so apprehensive at the prospect of meeting Lear. Viewed in the light of the king’s intimidating temperament, Cordelia’s decision to confront him appeared all the braver.

The Fool (Adrian Scarborough), who had been sitting on the walkway behind Lear all this time, now took Cordelia away and comforted her. This was also something he did subsequently to Lear, making him impartial in his affections.

Kent pleaded with Lear to change his mind but the king grasped the “recreant” and tore off his medal.

Cordelia’s two suitors Burgundy (Paapa Essiedu) and France (Ross Waiton) still had to be asked whether they wanted her. With Burgundy undecided, Lear behaved like a farmer who had taken livestock to market: with a cry of “up!” he goaded Cordelia to stand on a chair as he offered her to France at a reduced rate. She stared back at Lear with a mixture of disbelief and defiance before contradicting his assassination of her character. But Lear simply told her: “Better thou hadst not been born than not to have pleased me better.”

Lear sat and clapped Burgundy’s decision to abandon her, but when France indicated his affections by moving across to take Cordelia’s hand, the king rose up and broke through the pair, splitting them as he railed that he had “no such daughter”.

Cordelia said goodbye to Goneril and Regan, who continued after her departure with their conspiratorial cattiness. Goneril’s remark that “The best and soundest of his time hath been but rash” was an analysis that would be developed later.

The wall was flown down to represent Gloucester’s study, complete with a desk amongst whose clutter was an armillary sphere (1.2). Edmund sat on a couch with a letter which he pocketed hastily when his bespectacled father entered. Gloucester fell for the fake letter ruse and, having forced Edmund to hand it over by grabbing him by the throat, believed that Edgar was planning to kill him. The references to eclipses linked to the initial eclipse projection and also to the desk sphere. Gloucester consulted a book to read off the list of phenomena associated with such eclipses. Edmund mocked belief in astrology, mimicking one its acolytes in a vacuous uptalking accent.

Edgar (Tom Brooke) appeared in a plain cardigan smoking a cigar and holding a bottle of wine, which he poured into a glass. His dowdy appearance was analogous to that of Cordelia: neither were power-dressing for court; on the contrary, both were clothed solely to please themselves. This positioned them outside the power games of the court but also suggested their vulnerability to becoming victims of its machinations. By contrast Edmund was very much the smartly-dressed aspirational apparatchik. He convinced Edgar that he should hide from his father’s wrath.

The wall was flown up towards the end of Edmund’s final flourish to reveal Goneril and Oswald besides an elegant dining table set with plates and stemmed wine glasses (1.3). From offstage came the raucous sound of Lear’s men chanting “oggy oggy oggy”, which was followed by a pause and then Oswald’s comically understated “I hear him”. The impending arrival of Lear’s hordes prompted them to clear the delicate crockery and glassware from the table.

The banished Kent appeared on the walkway. He spoke in an Irish accent, wore ragged clothes and had shaved his head bald, which he stroked as he said he had “razed my likeness” (1.4). Lear and his soldiers entered and threw a huge dead stag onto the dinner table. Kent approached and joined them before getting the soldiers to sing a rude song about the King of France.

“The King of France is a mongrel bitch. He’s got blue balls, crabs and a seven year itch. The King of France is a jumped up frog. I fried his balls to feed my dog.”

Lear sat at a small table on which stood a brandy bottle and a pill container: given his condition, these pills might have been to prevent his violent outbursts. He noticed Kent and asked who he was. During his vague introduction, Kent added a comic touch by holding up the stag’s head on the table to emphasise make it say “eat no fish”. But despite this good humour, Lear’s guard still drew a gun on him as he approached. This was another reminder of the king’s paranoia. The disguised Kent did not mention his age.

Oswald (Simon Manyonda) entered and was wolf-whistled by the troops. He served Lear his dinner, consisting of an insultingly cheap burger, and walked away briskly. Lear called Oswald back and during the ensuing argument Kent tripped him before pushing Oswald bodily out of the dining hall with the rest of the squad moving aggressively to back him up. This solidarity demonstrated that Kent was now part of the pack that surrounded Lear. The king offered Kent “earnest of thy service” in the form of a swig from his brandy bottle.

The Fool was cheered by the men when he made an attention-grabbing entrance down the centre with a shopping trolley into which he had stuffed his ukulele. A hat with feathers served as his coxcomb. The text was altered so that the Fool referred to “the Lady Bitch” rather than “Brach”.

He laid his palms flat and read his speech from an invisible book. He asked Lear “Can you make use of nothing, nuncle?” and handed him the phantom volume in a neat visual gag about nothingness. The joke about an egg concealing two crowns fell deliberately and embarrassingly flat.

There were moments during this sequence when Lear stared out towards the audience as if possessed by troubled thoughts, hinting that the Fool’s jibes about Lear’s foolishness had struck home and explaining the confessional nature of his subsequent admission to the Fool that he had done Cordelia wrong.

Disorder

Goneril appeared and was also wolf-whistled by Lear’s men, behaviour that was understood to be typical of their disorder and of her poor treatment. Just as in the first scene, Goneril again looked tense and nervous: we would soon discover why.

The Fool sat at Lear’s table to eat, said he would be quiet, then deliberately spoke “That’s a shelled peascod” to interrupt Goneril, making her initial reference to the “all-licensed fool” very apt.

Stung by Goneril’s complaints about his followers’ behaviour and her request to “disquantity your train”, Lear walked around with an air of indignation, still with his stiff-backed stoop.

Lear’s anger with Goneril increased until he stood close to her and launched into his vituperative “sterility” speech. Goneril twitched as she boiled under the surface, her fury battling with her fear. After extensive provocation, culminating in Lear describing her as a “thankless child”, she lost her self-control and released what was probably years of frustration. She snapped and slapped him, a microsecond later recoiling and shaking in fear of his retribution. This sequence was a very interesting depiction of Goneril being pushed to her limit, but still scared of Lear, the trauma of her internal struggle playing out across her quaking body.

Lear cursed some more about the reduction in his train until he set off to visit Regan. Goneril sent Oswald with a letter for Regan explaining the latest developments.

The soldiers that accompanied Lear marched across the stage front and some of them deserted and peeled off to escape up the aisle walkway (1.5). This suggested that not only was Lear’s train being reduced but that he was also losing the confidence of his men.

Lear and the Fool paused on their march. The Fool sensed the king’s need for encouragement and jollied him along while nervously avoiding eye contact. Lear sat and scratched his legs and knees staring into space. The sequence showed not a cosy bond of intimate friendship but a state of tension. The Fool’s jokes were an attempt to get through to Lear, but he knew he was failing in this and was painfully aware that Lear was deeply troubled.

The king invoked “sweet heaven” to “Keep me in temper”, his hands gesturing downwards to indicate the repression of something bubbling up: viewed in retrospect this looked not so much like a general wish not to become insane but more like fear of relapse into the kind of insane violence which we would come to realise had been a longstanding feature of his character.

Curan (Daniel Millar) brought food to Edmund in his room, and he was very happy to hear from Curan that Cornwall was on his way (2.1). But the food was then offered to Edgar who, we discovered, was hiding behind the bed. Edmund urged him to flee, warning him about the impending arrival of Cornwall and Regan.

Edgar ran off the walkway, while Edmund decided to inflict a knife would on himself. He braced himself with the knife poised to make its incision, but then relented, turning his comment that he had seen drunk men do more “in sport” look like a cowardly delaying tactic. But he summoned his courage, and once he had cut his arm, he was ready to show the wound with comic self-pity to Gloucester.

The sound of Cornwall and Regan’s car was heard and soon the couple were in the room. Edmund immediately caught her attention and she began eyeing him up. She noticed his wounded forearm and tied one of her outfit’s lacy accessories round it. True to her character, she also flirted with Oswald.

Cornwall made a more dispassionate assessment of the situation. As he spoke with Edmund, he pulled down the lacy bandage and scrutinised the wound, giving Edmund a blank look suggesting that he suspected that the wound was self-inflicted. This made Cornwall’s enthusiasm to recruit him a recognition that Edmund had a similar thuggish cunning to his own.

The wall was flown up to reveal a courtyard dominated by a statue of Lear, depicted as a tall upright man quite unlike the stooped homunculus we had seen (2.2). The statue was either a depiction of him when much younger or a ridiculously flattering portrait.

Kent sat at the foot of the plinth and argued with the arriving Oswald. The confusing references to “Lipsbury pinfold” and suchlike were cut, in line with the production’s excision of opaque language.

Kent fought with Oswald, slapped him and then picked him up as if ready to cast him down. But he was interrupted by the household and its guests. He pugnaciously took on all comers leaving Cornwall with no choice but to restrain him.

Cornwall took off his own belt and placed it around Kent’s neck to lead him back to the statue. Regan took hold of this impromptu leash and placed her heel up near Kent’s chest. This provided a neat justification for Kent’s “if I were your father’s dog you should not use me so”. He was placed in the stocks, which consisted of light chains: one set round his feet, another on his wrists, which were linked by a connecting chain. Kent, now reverting to his normal accent, took comfort in his imprisonment by reading the letter from Cordelia.

The revolve took the statue and Kent off to one side as Edgar entered stage left announcing that he would disguise himself and hide. He mentioned that “the country gives me proof and precedent” and went off to join a shadowy line of poor, clothed beggars facing towards us from upstage (2.3). He provided no protracted description of his disguise, so that this sequence became more of a social and political comment on the effect of Lear’s dictatorship. Because this was a modern dress production, the prospect of an ancient form of vagabondage appeared all the more unjust.

The revolve brought back Kent again at the foot of the statue where Lear soon discovered him chained up (2.4). Lear was bug eyed in disbelief and suffered a bout of “hysterica passio”, retrieving his bottle of pills and holding it behind his back as he fretted. Kent asked the Fool about Lear’s small train and the Fool sat next to him and pointed at the statue of Lear to explain that he should not follow “him that’s stinking”. He sung his song accompanying himself on the ukulele.

Lear was still furious at not being able to speak with Cornwall or Regan. When they both eventually appeared, Lear was obviously highly relieved to be with Regan in whom he now placed all his hopes. So when Regan used her girly voice to persuade her father to return to Goneril and defended her sister, the blow was crushing.

Albany and Goneril made their entrance down the walkway with Goneril supportively taking Regan by the hand, who continued to urge Lear to return to Goneril.

Lear angrily separated their hands and Goneril’s curt comment “At your choice sir” really enraged him. He turned on Goneril and menaced “do not make me mad”, which made her nervous and twitchy as we had seen her previously. Understandably Goneril edged away from Lear, but he tried to mollify her, saying “I will not trouble thee, my child”.

Goneril was gladdened by this apparent change of heart and tentatively moved towards her father, raising her hand slightly from her side, as if wanting to seal this apparent reconciliation with physical contact. But these hopes were immediately dashed by his vituperative description of her as a “boil” and a “carbuncle”. With some of his fury abated by this outburst, he turned from her saying “But I’ll not chide thee”.

Regan’s triumphantly catty deliver of “And in good time you gave it” was consistent with her slightly bitchy, flirty character. Lear approached Regan and handled her thin top “which scarcely keeps thee warm”.

Lear sat on the statue plinth as he vowed to wreak his revenges on his daughters. But his faltering on their precise nature looked weak and pathetic, and the sisters exchanged knowing looks as if confirming their previous assessment of him as a waning force.

Lear departed to the sound of the approaching storm.

As Kent dispatched the Knight to Dover to report to Cordelia’s forces on Lear’s predicament, Lear and the Fool entered and walked up a stage ramp that gradually rose and revolved until they found themselves at its summit several metres above the stage, facing out towards the audience (3.1).

Lear stood to face down the storm with the Fool crouched at his side clinging to his leg (3.2). No wind or rain effects were deployed, making Lear’s words clearly audible, but the long drop beneath them introduced a real sense of peril more acute than any simulation of meteorological conditions. The storm was imagined rather than recreated.

The ramp lowered and revolved as they descended again to be met by Kent who offered to take Lear to a nearby hovel.

In a very touching moment, the Fool sang “The wind and the rain” with the tender affection of a lullaby and embraced Lear comfortingly. This prefigured Lear’s subsequent comforting of Gloucester. The Fool delivered his prophecy before joining the others who had gone off stage right to the hovel.

Outside in the rain Gloucester told Edmund about the letter relating to the invasion in support of Lear (3.3). As they embraced, crafty Edmund picked Gloucester’s pocket for the keys to the closet in which the letter was locked and delighted in telling us that he would leak the intelligence to Cornwall.

The group approached the hovel represented by a trap door (3.4). Lear fretted about his daughters but summarily dismissed the idea of continuing to dwell on them: “That way madness lies” was rushed over and not dwelt on.

Lear took off his boots and coat pledging “to feel what wretches feel”. The Fool cried as Edgar appeared from out of the hovel completely naked and splattered in mud. He had a blanket in his hand, but does not wrap it round himself for quite some time. He looked down at his genitals and, reflecting on their condition, commented “Poor Tom’s a cold”. He eventually talked with Lear downstage explaining his story with the blanket now wrapped around his groin.

A great sequence followed in which Lear stood without his boots and jacket looking at Edgar as he turned slowly downstage, his vacant gaze following an imaginary horse as he beckoned “cessez” to it. This marked the first of many subsequent moments of post-storm calmness characterised by a beautiful, serene bleakness.

Full of admiration for this “unaccommodated man” Lear took off his clothes to stand in just his pants and vest. The king continued to insist on talking with Edgar until ushered away.

Letter

Back inside the house, Edmund insinuated himself with Cornwall, having revealed his father’s letter (3.5).

Gloucester brought them to an outhouse full of household fittings including a bath tub, toilet bowl and a table on which stood a tea urn (3.6).

Lear set about putting his daughters on trial in a mock court. The toilet was positioned before them to represent Goneril, the tea urn stood in for Regan, and the bath was dragged to the centre as a bench for the magistrates. The Fool sat on the urn and pretended to be Regan by miming smoking and jiggling around. The text was altered to reference Goneril slapping Lear so that he said that she had “hit the poor King her father” and not the original text’s “kicked”.

We had seen Lear’s earlier fury. We had seen his medication. We had seen how others, particularly Goneril, were scared of him. We soon arrived at the destination to which these things had signposted us.

Lear suddenly broke off from his arraignment and turned on the Fool screaming at him “False justicer, why hast thou let her escape?” He thwacked him backwards into the bath and then continued hitting him with a short piece of pipe. Given the jocular nature of the mock trial, the frantic rain of blows looked like a joke.

But then the king dropped the bloodstained pipe at the side, the Fool lay silent and unmoving with his feet dangling out of the bath, and the shocking truth became to sink in. Anyone who knew the play would have found this extra-textual murder particularly stunning.

Lear rambled about his little dogs and about Regan until Kent took him aside and put him to bed. Lear muttered about “Supper i’the morning” after which the Fool’s foot twitched as he briefly revived and groaned “And I’ll go to bed at noon” before falling limp, presumably dead.

Gloucester came to warn them of the death plot against the king. Lear was roused and escorted out. As he made his way towards the door, he glanced down into the bath and shrieked as he saw the dead and badly beaten body of the Fool. The shock indicated that Lear had no recollection of what he had done, which was symptomatic of a severe mental collapse, possibly a recurrence of the madness from which he had asked heaven to protect him in 1.5.

Edgar was left alone to comment on the impact of seeing “our betters… bearing our woes”. As he spoke the revolve turned to reveal the set for the next scene already full with its characters ready for the off.

The location changed to a wine cellar lined with racks of bottles (3.7). Goneril and Edmund left Regan and Cornwall to deal with the captured Gloucester, who was brought in as their prisoner. Regan was cattily unpleasant to the old man. He was tied to a chair, hooded, then leant back in the chair and waterboarded to make him answer Cornwall’s questions about the French-led invasion.

His hood was torn off after he had finished answering. With Gloucester still tied to the chair, Cornwall slowly unscrewed a corkscrew from a wine bottle and brandished it, creating a frisson of horror for anyone familiar with this scene.

The corkscrew was then driven into one of Gloucester’s eyes. The staging had a kind of cinematic realism uncommon in the theatre, where the artifice of this moment, with its lychees and black paint, is often apparent and makes it comparatively safe to watch. Here, however, one’s instinct was to avert one’s gaze.

Regan was ecstatically happy at this, prompting the suspicion that she was as insane as Lear. Clearly Regan’s reaction here and her father’s recent display of psychotic violence were of a similar nature.

The Servant (Jonathan Dryden-Taylor) siding with Gloucester wounded Cornwall just by walking up to him and jabbing him in the stomach with a blade, upon which Regan flew at him in fury and stabbed him in the back with her own dagger. Cornwall took out Gloucester’s other eye with the corkscrew. His venomous “Where is thy lustre now?” was aimed at Gloucester and not addressed, as often, to his eyeball.

Cornwall sat and began to bleed profusely. His injury had not been obvious at first, but now Regan escorted him way. This left the remaining servants to decide how to help Gloucester, who, abandoned by the others, struggled to his feet and groped in his newly-inflicted blindness to find the door, harking back to Regan’s spiteful admonition that he should “smell his way to Dover”. This pitiful tableau led into the interval.

At the start of the second half, Edgar sat outside the door of the house begging from passers-by and then caught sight of the Old Man (Colin Haigh) escorting Gloucester (4.1). Edgar reintroduced himself as Poor Tom, but the long list of fiends was cut in keeping with the modernising of the play’s world. Father and disguised son set off for Dover.

The wall slowly rose to reveal Edmund in a clinch with Goneril, whose blouse was unbuttoned and skirt unzipped to show more of her legs (4.2). The slow pace of the reveal was deliberately designed to provide a teasingly brief glimpse of Edmund gripping his hands around Goneril’s neck as if choking her, before moving his hands into a more natural embrace. This hinted that the history of violence in the family had manifested itself in Goneril as a taste for erotic asphyxiation.

Goneril gave Edmund a necklace before he departed and, indicating that playtime was over, zipped her skirt back down as Albany entered. She told him that she was worth the whistling in reference back to her recent satisfying encounter with Edmund.

Albany confronted Goneril with her wrongdoing and in the ensuing argument, he also grasped her around the neck until she freed herself by grabbing at his crotch. Having felt his ‘package’ she made a weeny gesture with her crooked little finger to mock his “…manhood, [with a] mew!”

A messenger brought news of Cornwall’s death, prompting Goneril to come forward and say she liked it well. The confusingly repetitive follow-on “tart” phrase was cut.

After the brief scene (4.3) in which Kent and a Gentleman spoke downstage with some expository details about Lear and Cordelia, the wall rose up to reveal soldiers standing amid tall grass at the back (4.4). Among them stood Cordelia in military gear with an assault rifle.

The opening of the scene was rewritten so that Cordelia asked “Where’s the King my father?” and what are normally Cordelia’s first lines describing his situation were shared between a Doctor (Hannah Stokely) and a Nurse (Cassie Bradley), ending with a reference to “in your sustaining corn”. Cordelia instructed “A century send forth” and hoped Lear would be found.

The aftermath of Cornwall’s funeral saw Regan in a formal mourning outfit consisting of a figure-hugging dark trouser suit and fascinator move across the stage accompanied in single file by her attendants, all of them carrying umbrellas and forming a gloomy Jack Vettriano-style painting (4.5).

Regan and Oswald detached from the solemn line and she questioned her servant as to why he was carrying a letter from Goneril to Edmund. She ran her fingers flirtatiously up Oswald’s shoulder while trying to talk him into revealing its contents in her gratingly affected posh accent, then plucked the letter from his inside pocket. She countered Goneril’s apparent affection for Edmund by claiming him as hers.

Edgar led Gloucester up the slope, formed by the same ramp used for the storm scene, but with now just a one-foot drop (4.6). After some deliberations, Gloucester tumbled forward over its edge and passed out.

Lear appeared in an operating gown, still with a drip tube in the back of his hand, wearing a hat with feathers, which was apparently the Fool’s hat to which some wild flowers had been added.

This minor detail was significant because it mean in effect that Lear was wearing the Fool’s “coxcomb”. It constituted a symbol of self-awareness, a crucial step towards recovering his sanity, while also showing a touching affection for the man he had killed in his blind rage.

Lear announced (using the F version) “They cannot touch me for crying”, which struck a discordant note for those familiar with the more usual “coining”.

He carried a plastic bag full of flowers and gave some of them as “press-money” to Edgar. A banana represented the mouse-baiting cheese. Lear asked Edgar to “give the word”, upon which he glanced at the flowers he had been given and guessed correctly that he should respond “sweet marjoram”.

Instead of the furious rapid hectoring Lear had used in first scene, his speech was calm, slow and infused with an almost hypnotic serenity. His languid delivery indicated that the fire inside him had burned out. Simon Russell Beale’s performance in this sequence was masterful. The barrenness of the stage and Lear’s tattered clothes rendered the moment reminiscent of Waiting for Godot.

Gloucester recognised the king and fell into conversation with him. Lear sat looking at a tabloid paper (The Sun, 15 January) containing a picture of “yon simpering dame”. He started playing with himself, pointing at the model’s chest as he described them as “women all above”, after which he needed to wipe his hand because it smelled “of mortality”.

Lear lifted up Gloucester’s bandage and looked at his eye sockets to ask “dost thou squint at me?” After asking Gloucester to remove his invisible boots, Lear recognised and named him “… thy name is Gloucester”, at which point he held and comforted him before continuing “Thou must be patient”. This tender moment further humanised the now calm Lear, and contained an echo of the way the Fool had comforted him during his madness.

But soon Lear’s mind wandered off on a tangent. He held out his hand and touched Gloucester’s head as he “preached” to him and then remarked that this head was “a good block” before plotting to shoe horses with felt and “kill, kill, kill…” his sons-in-law.

He became just as frenzied as when he had battered the Fool, tearing up the remaining flowers, which prompted the attendants to put him in a straightjacket and tie up his arms, presumably to prevent a repeat of his previous murderous rage. Once restrained in the jacket, he said he would be “jovial” and lunged forward to kiss the female attendant. Lear tried to run away but was caught and injected with a sedative in his backside. This explained the long sleep from which he would subsequently awake.

Edgar and Gloucester were left alone until Oswald and a squad of soldiers walked across the back. Oswald spotted them at a distance and moved to intercept. Knives were drawn, and Oswald was killed. He told Edgar about the letter and collapsed back dead uttering “O untimely death, death!” in a self-consciously absurd way that got a laugh.

Repose

After a brief conversation with Kent, Cordelia was informed that Lear was still sleeping (4.7). A large hospital bed with closed curtains stage right indicated his place of repose.

The curtains were drawn back and Cordelia pitied him. He awoke and rose from the bed, having been detached from the drip. He looked down at the needle still in his hand as he said “I feel this pinprick”, a piece of very modern stage business that cleverly gave sense to the phrase.

Cordelia knelt to him by the side of the bed. He tried to kneel too, but she insisted that he not abase himself. He started away, still very much befuddled, while she remained kneeling with tears in her eyes with her back to him, upset that he had not recognised her.

Then in an extremely moving moment, Cordelia looked up as she sensed his growing clarity of mind, culminating in his recognition of his “child Cordelia”. At this she looked round in nervous anticipation. He approached, wiped at her tears and tasted them to determine that they were indeed wet, thereby confirming the reality of her presence and her love for him.

Lear opened the door of the room and stood briefly in the doorway, where he saw French soldiers on guard: this prompted his question “Am I in France?”

The sequence ended on a delightful note. Lear pronounced “I am old and foolish” as he walked off extending his hand backwards, an invitation to accompany him that his dear daughter accepted by taking hold of it.

The brief exchange between Kent and the Gentleman was cut so as not to ruin the poignancy of this affectionate reunion.

The short scene 5.2 was bracketed round 5.1 so that Gloucester was hid before the battle preparations and then emerged once it had finished.

A long table stood under a chandelier covered in a dust cloth, which suggested that Regan and Edmund were preparing their assault in a large abandoned house (5.1).

Regan teasingly questioned Edmund about his intentions towards Goneril and then watched Goneril go off with him. But Regan made no comment except for a wry smile, so that the text’s tussle between the sisters was not spoken but merely hinted at.

The order of the next two sequences was reversed so that Edmund explained his dilemma over choosing between Goneril and Regan, who had just exited, pointing at Albany who was sat in semi-darkness reading at the desk, physically but not theatrically present, before concluding that he would kill Lear and Cordelia.

After Edmund has left, Edgar entered at the side and caught Albany’s attention and handed him the letter proving his wife’s treachery.

The battle ensued, marked by the sound of gunfire and the overflight of helicopters and jets, followed by the last part of 5.2. Edgar accompanied his father to the walkway and crouched to watch events onstage while Gloucester lay motionless.

Defeated and handcuffed, Lear and Cordelia were pushed and shoved into the room (5.3). They sat next to each other on the audience side of the long table.

Cordelia looked downcast, but Lear enthusiastically tried to buoy her up with the fantasy image of them singing like birds in a cage. She was initially angry at her capture, but he tried to pacify her, nuzzling her despite his hands still being bound. They were taken away, leaving Edmund to give order for their deaths to the Captain (Ross Waiton again).

An argument broke out as Regan supported Edmund’s newly enhanced status, which turned into a fight over him between her and Goneril. Regan fell progressively sick, collapsed under the table and died. Almost simultaneously, a large body of troops entered the room to act as backup as Albany arrested Edmund and confronted Goneril with her letter to him.

Albany’s jokey rebuttal of Goneril’s claim on Edmund, that his wife was “sub-contracted to this lord” and Goneril’s retort “An interlude”, were cut to remove all trace of humour from the sequence as the tragedy intensified.

Edgar entered via the aisle without the text’s fanfare, telling Edmund that he was indeed a traitor. Instead of fighting as a mystery challenger, Edgar took off his hood and spoke the lines from 5.3.165 onwards declaring who he was before attacking Edmund. This made him bolder and braver, as well as speeding up the action.

He approached Edmund, showed him his dagger and then brusquely stabbed him in stomach. Edmund fell and was comforted by Goneril, who denounced the “practice”, which in this staging was the abrupt stabbing. Albany confronted his wife with the damning letter and she tore at it claiming that “the laws are mine”.

There was no reconciliation between Edgar and the dying Edmund, which fitted with Edgar’s single-minded assault. Edmund admitted his guilt and remarked that events had come “full circle”.

Edgar recounted how he had accompanied his father Gloucester and described the circumstances of his death. Gloucester was indeed lying just offstage on the aisle walkway, which enabled his body to be part of the final tableau of the dead.

Goneril took a dagger and sat in a chair at the stage left end of the table and unceremoniously cut her own throat (possibly prompted by the story of Gloucester’s death). Once again the production surprised and shook up anyone who thought they knew what was coming next. The stage was now littered with bodies, and there was no need for Goneril or Regan to be brought out.

Edmund’s change of heart and sword dispatch were cut. After Goneril’s death he simply said that he had been “contracted to them both; all three now marry in an instant” and died. Albany shook Edmund’s slumped body asking him what had happened to Lear and Cordelia: his question was soon answered.

The finale began its final crushing movement as Lear entered carrying Cordelia, crying “howl, howl, howl”. He laid Cordelia lengthways on the table, asked for a looking glass but instead tore off a small strip of paper which he held over her mouth, talking of the feather he could see being moved by her breath. He momentarily left Cordelia and spoke to Kent who introduced himself.

As he told Kent “You’re welcome hither”, Lear picked Cordelia up from the table and sat on a chair, placing Cordelia upright on his lap where he embraced her tightly in his arms, her face turned towards his.

Albany’s comment on the allocation of power was cut to focus on Lear and Cordelia. Lear paused when he remarked that his poor fool “is… hanged”. This was either him misremembering or lying to himself.

He lamented that Cordelia had no life. Realising that “O thoul’t come no more” Lear laid her down on the ground. This marked the point at which he finally accepted she was dead.

Lear repeated the word “never” five times, staring out at the audience with wild, mad eyes, in a moment of unutterable desperation. He slumped to the ground and asked for his shirt to be unbuttoned, a task performed by Kent.

He propped himself up and gestured towards Cordelia pitifully beseeching everyone to “look on her”, but Albany and Kent deliberately turned away, only Kent giving a half-glance back. Lear collapsed and tried to crawl away with his ebbing strength towards the aisle walkway. Edgar was crouched on the walkway and extended his hand as if encouraging Lear to persevere and reach him, calling out “Look up, my lord” as Lear collapsed face down.

Edgar continued to gesture towards Lear even after he had clearly expired. Kent realised Lear had gone and eventually so did Edgar.

Kent went off to kill himself, leaving Edgar alone amid the scattered bodies to deliver his final speech, whose closing words “we that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long” actually felt as if they meant something.

Conclusions

This was a great production for those who thought they had seen it all before. It kept to the outline of the story but constantly threw out surprises for both old hands and those new to the play.

The killing of the Fool and Goneril’s onstage suicide were unexpected moments that provided genuine shock.

The theme of Lear’s violent temper was explored through hints of a violent backstory underlining his relationship with Goneril. Kate Fleetwood’s performance was one of the production’s highlights for its detailed illumination of how Lear had mistreated her. As such, she represented the impact Lear had had on all his victims.

There was a distinct contrast between the fast-talking, angry Lear at the start of the play and the more languidly-voiced Lear that seemed to haunt the bleak wilderness of the end of the play.

The production managed the neat trick of being modernised and stripped bare at the same time.

Thomas Hiddlestonus Donmaranus

Coriolanus, Donmar Warehouse, 27 December 2013

A bare brick wall bore traces of previously erased graffiti. Plastic chairs stood in a line at its base and a ladder rose from just right of centre stage up into the flies. The stage itself was bare apart from a gully into which debris was occasionally swept.

At the start of the performance most of the cast went to sit on their chairs while Young Martius (Rudi Goodman) painted a large red square onto the stage floor guided by beams of light that showed him where to colour (1.1). This square represented a generic room that was employed in several sequences and whose outline was lit again when in use. A gap was left on the stage left side of the room through which characters entered and exited.

The text was severely cut so that the running time was 2h30m with a 15m interval. The first half lasted 90 minutes and the second well under an hour.

Two citizens (Mark Stanley and Dwane Walcott) painted the huge words ANNONA (grain) and PLEBIS (the people) on to the wall. Other slogans were projected onto it. The 1^st Citizen’s (Rochenda Sandall) opening words “Before we proceed any further” became a reference to the graffitiing. She was the most aggressive and confrontational of the three and carried a small hand axe which she intermittently gestured with as if ready to use, which contrasted with the other’s more passive, artistic resistance.

Menenius (Mark Gatiss) rose and came forward when he was mentioned. His reference to “bats and clubs” was a mild euphemism for the hand axe carried by the 1^st Citizen.

His costume, like that of the rest of the cast, was halfway between Roman and modern. He wore a long, slightly shabby coat which made him look more like a poet than a patrician. This suited his florid style of speech. He spoke quietly but confidently about the munificence of the patricians in his “pretty tale”, the belly metaphor.

The patrician flipped up his waistcoat to show his shirt to “make the belly smile”. He made fun of the 2^nd Citizen with his great toe joke, pointing at his own outstretched toe on the punch line “thou goest foremost”.

Menenius’ extended explanation was cut short by Martius (Tom Hiddleston) bursting in. After a brief “Thanks” he began his verbal assault on the citizens. This was the action of a messenger and not a man in command. Despite seizing a length of pipe from one of them, it appeared that he had rushed to appear at their bidding rather than confronting them from the security of his own position. He became a supplicant to them.

The first impression of Hiddleston’s Coriolanus was that he was simply an angry young man. This was possibly age-appropriate for the historical character, but held little more appeal.

The tribunes, sat on the stage left end chairs, stood when their “grant” was mentioned. The extent to which Coriolanus disapproved of them would become apparent later.

News came of the Volscian invasion and Aufidius (Hadley Fraser) rose from his chair allowing us to identify the man whom Coriolanus described as the “lion” he was “proud to hunt”. Coriolanus jokingly accused Titus Lartius (Alfred Enoch) of being stiff, upon which they slapped each other playfully.

Sicinia (Helen Schlesinger) and Brutus (Elliot Levy) stood up from their chairs in spotlight and complained about Martius’ pride. Their conspiratorial talk in a corner highlighted their relative weakness and outsider status within Roman politics.

The Volscians had Yorkshire accents, which served to distinguish them from the southern English Romans, but this demarcation was not strictly necessary (1.2). The Volscian senate was indicated by the presence of a simple lectern, from which they spoke to the audience as if addressing the assembly, with a hint that it held the microphone through which it was necessary to speak.

The letter informing them that the Roman army was on its way proved that they were being spied on. Aufidius was as unconvincing a warrior as Martius. The Volscians decided to proceed with their attack, instructing Aufidius to return to Corioli if the Romans laid siege to it.

Young Martius played with his sword as Volumnia (Deborah Findlay) and Virgilia (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) brought forward two chairs on which they sat to sew a large flag (1.3). This was war work, not dainty domestic sewing, and hinted at Volumnia’s martial enthusiasm for her son’s career.

Virgilia suppressed tears that showed she was upset at husband’s absence. Her sniffling became the reason that Volumnia asked her to be “in a more comfortable sort”. The Gentlewoman (Rochenda Sandall again) announced the arrival of Valeria (Jacqueline Boatswain). Virglia wanted to leave but Volumnia insisted that she stay and rose to act out Martius stamping on his enemies: an excellent portrayal of her fervour and pride. Virgilia’s horror at Volumnia’s description of bloodshed was developed further to show by her unspoken reactions how uncomfortable she was within this militaristic family.

They sat and sewed again. Valeria was shown in. She, like the Gentlewoman, observed the doorway in the painted, lit wall of the room. As she approached Virgilia to comment on the sewing, Virgilia turned her face away to hide that she had recently been crying, with the implication that the intensity and duration of her crying had made it impossible to conceal.

She concentrated on her sewing, but looked up in horror as Valeria described how she had seen Young Martius play with and then tear up a butterfly. She was dumbstruck at this cruelty, but such was her submission to this martial environment that her objection came only in her curt remark “A crack, madam”.

Virgilia shot up and paid attention when she heard that Valeria had news of her husband. Virgilia would not go with Valeria but shouted after her as she left the room by its ‘door’.

The stage was cleared and chairs were dragged forward to make a trench in which the Roman army crouched low on the ground, facing the back wall representing Corioli (1.4).

The text was cut so that the scene began with Martius getting the army ready, exhorting “Now put your shields before your hearts and fight”. They charged forward and up rungs on the wall which had ladders projected on to it. Martius ascended the real ladder. Earth came tumbling down as well as fireworks.

The Romans fell back, climbing down the short distance they had ascended the wall. Martius also descended to castigate them before returning to his ladder. Continuing upwards, he disappeared into the flies, marking his entry into Corioli.

Martius then re-entered covered in blood.

The sequence at the start of 1.5 with the looters was cut so that the action became continuous. Martius rallied his men, dismissing his injuries by proclaiming that the “drop of blood is rather physical”.

Cominius (Peter De Jersey) greeted Martius, who wished to be sent against Aufidius (1.6). This agreed, Martius encouraged the troops drawing attention to “this painting”: the blood covering him. He rapped his sword hilt on the ground, a gesture the others copied as they became enthused by his rhetoric. He raised his sword above his head at “O, me alone! Make you a sword of me?” which he spoke quietly as a kind of invocation or prayer

The brief scene 1.7 was cut, leading straight into confrontation between Aufidius and Martius in 1.8. The pair ran at each other and touched swords together first before Martius declared “I’ll fight with none but thee.” They took up positions and then fought, both eventually losing their swords, punching and grappling until Martius got the advantage. He squatted over the prone Aufidius with his hand round his throat choking him and seemed to be relishing the process.

When it looked as if Aufidius was about to die, one his men rushed to Martius’s side and put a sword at his neck. Three others came forward alternately from either side so that eventually a Roman threatened a Volscian, who threatened the Roman who threatened Aufidius’ backer. In this standoff, Aufidius escaped but not without castigating his men for their “condemned seconds”. Martius offered Aufidius his sword back, but then withdrew it and kept the weapon as a prize from the encounter.

Martius appeared after the battle with his arm in a sling as the soldiers chanted “Martius” (1.9). He stood on a chair at one end of a straggle of chairs, while Cominius climbed onto another chair some distance away to praise his deeds and offer him a garland. As he was being proclaimed “Coriolanus”, he moved to a line of four chairs, three of which were then removed to leave him standing alone as the army chanted his new name.

Later, as he crouched near the ground to rest, he forgot the name of man he wanted to have saved.

At the end of the sequence, he took his shirt off, a painful process because of the wounds underneath, and showered in stream of water, which exacerbated the pain. He was injured on his shoulder and left arm as described later by Volumnia. Once over the initial shock he washed his hair and shook it sending out sprays of blood. As he did so, the sound of swords being sharpened played subtly over the top.

The blood was washed away into a gully by a sweeper.

Aufidius complained bitterly about the Volscian defeat, the imposed treaty, and his desire to beat Martius. One puddle of Coriolanus’ bloody water remained in which Aufidius bathed his hands when saying he wanted to “wash my fierce hand in’s heart”. When he was finished with it, he gestured at the sweeper to continue cleaning.

Menenius sat some distance away from the two tribunes who were centre stage seated next to each other (2.1). They fell into conversation about Martius and Menenius was quietly disparaging of them. They accused Martius of pride but he wished they could “turn your eyes towards the nape of your necks” to see their own pride. He became increasingly angry at them, criticising their ambition.

The three women entered, brandishing their letters telling of Martius’ return and shared the glad news with Menenius who embraced them.

But further tension was seen between Volumnia and Virgilia. Menenius pointed out that Martius was “wont to come home wounded”, at which Virgilia repeatedly cried “no”, while Volumnia insisted that her son was indeed wounded and thanked the gods for it. Virgilia cast Volumnia a look of shocked disgust that she should wish Martius to be injured. This once again showed the contrast in their values and how Virgilia did not fit in.

Volumnia and Menenius’ discussion of the history of Martius’ injuries, during which he joyously completed her sentences, was interrupted by the sound of Martius’ triumphant approach. Volumnia stood centre stage to pronounce the ominous “doth lie… men die” as rose petals fell from the flies.

Coriolanus entered in his garland to great acclaim. He was formally welcomed and faced the audience until Cominius pointed out “Look, sir, your mother” at which he turned embarrassed to find Volumnia behind him.

She congratulated him and with her final words “But O, thy wife” disparagingly introduced Virgilia who hugged her husband as he remarked on her crying. This textual reference to her crying linked back to her first tearful appearance.

They set off for the Capitol, leaving Brutus and Sicinia sitting in spotlight at the side. They were worried about losing power if Coriolanus became consul, but took comfort that his arrogance towards the people might prove his undoing. They left for Capitol as well.

Lectern

The initial sequence with the officers at the start of 2.2 was cut, so the action continued with the senators. The chairs were rearranged and brought forward. They sat in a line behind the central lectern with Coriolanus standing between them. The tribunes were on chairs at the end of the line again.

The 1^st Senator’s slightly condescending acknowledgement of the “Masters o’th’ people” produced two responses: Coriolanus, who disapproved of their influence, snapped his fingers and gestured at them to sit down as they rose to speak from the lectern; the tribunes in turn were curt and sarcastic, expressing their muted animosity towards Martius’ promotion.

The fact that the tribunes advanced to the lectern, speaking from which became a marker of authority, provided an initial point of physical conflict between them and Martius that would later become more pronounced.

Coriolanus went to the back and walked up and down behind the line of chairs while he was lauded. During Cominius’ long paean, the others, especially Titus Lartius, slapped their papers in approval, whereas the tribunes were notable by their withdrawn silence. Sicinia looked down at her pad and made furious notes as she was in the habit of doing during these proceedings.

Coriolanus was called back in. The Officer’s line “He doth appear” was given to Brutus as a sarcastic aside. He was offered the consulship if he would speak to the people in the market. The gown of humility was shown to him from the stage right walkway. But he did not want to go through with the ceremony.

Tribunes were again left behind to complain.

The citizens gathered in the market place and were handed red ballots by the tribunes which the people would offer as their “voices” (2.3).

Coriolanus entered in his gown. He begged their voices but in a way that involved gesturing at them, snapping his fingers and snatching the red papers from their hands, all of which was consistent with someone who considered himself there because of “mine own desert”.

He became sarcastic and mocked his own servility, the comedy of which prompted some tittering in the audience.

To mark his general acceptance by the populace he walked along the long line of the cast seated at the back, taking red ballots from their hands. He handed the pile of papers to the tribunes at the end of the line, who then rose.

Menenius was satisfied that he had completed the task and Coriolanus left for the Senate.

Brutus and Sicinia got to work convincing the people to change their minds. Once they believed they had been duped, they retrieved their ballots from the box and began tearing them up.

Coriolanus, Titus Lartius and Cominius were discussing the uneasy standoff between Rome and Antium (3.1).

Into the middle of this burst the tribunes and emptied a box of torn, rejected ballots over him. Coriolanus was insulted and held a handful of shredded papers to ask “Have I had children’s voices?”

The argument with the tribunes continued once they had returned to their seats. Sicinia looked up into the galleries to predict portentously that “It is a mind that shall remain a poison where it is, not poison any further”. Coriolanus became quietly furious at “her absolute shall”.

He continued to berate Sicinia, walking behind her as she cast her eyes downward and scribbled yet more furious notes.

Coriolanus justified his position and the absolute authority of the patricians, mocking the common people’s opinion by imitating their accent. He derided the “double worship” of allowing the tribunes authority so that “nothing is done to purpose”.

Brutus came to the lectern and accused him of treason. This produced a physical confrontation between him and Coriolanus in which they scuffled after which Coriolanus stood aside gesturing at Brutus to come and have a go if he was hard enough.

In the commotion Sicinia told the people that they risked losing their liberties, insisting “What is the city but the people?” She became more determined, calling for Coriolanus to be pushed from the Tarpeian rock.

Coriolanus now totally lost his temper, kicked over the lectern and drew his sword at them. They took shelter, with Brutus scaling the first few rungs of the ladder, shielding behind it to point accusingly at Coriolanus before describing him (using Sicinius’ lines) as “this viper that would depopulate the city, and be every man himself”.

Menenius tried to assuage the tribunes and citizens, describing Coriolanus as a diseased limb to be cured not cut off, and said he would bring him to the market place again.

Set within the confines of the red box room, Coriolanus’ first words “I muse my mother…” were spoken to Virgilia as she kissed him. She then departed to stand outside as Volumnia tried to convince her son to play politics (3.2).

Virgilia paced up and down outside listening and fretting. She looked astounded when Volumnia claimed “I am in this your wife…”. Virgilia returned later to kiss him again.

Her exclusion from this conversation underscored her irrelevance and outsider status. It also added to the claustrophobic atmosphere as Volumnia, Menenius and Cominius crowded within the small space of the room with Coriolanus. But it made her more present as a character and allowed us to see her reaction to words that normally she would not overhear.

At the end, when he had agreed to return to the market, Coriolanus spoke sarcastically about doing things “mildly”, repeating the word in mockery. To be on the safe side, Cominius took Coriolanus’ sword from him to prevent a repeat of his previous aggression.

Brutus painted a small black square on the stage to mark out the spot in the market place on which Coriolanus was to be confined during his contrite reappearance (3.3). Brutus and Sicinia were so happy that their plan had worked so far that they embraced and kissed as they finalised their scheme to secure Coriolanus’ downfall by stoking his anger.

Coriolanus returned, stepped inside the black box and was challenged by the tribunes. He became enraged by their accusation of treachery.

Menenius and Cominius observed the unfolding situation with keen interest, leaning in to whisper comments to each other and then occasionally calling on Coriolanus to show moderation. The staging emphasised that their individual contributions were the product of their collusion.

Citizens stood on both walkways calling for him to be sent to the rock. Coriolanus seized on Brutus’ mention of word “service”, infuriated at its use by an upstart civilian.

Whipped up by Sicinia, the people demanded Coriolanus’ execution, crying “It shall be so”. The cacophony was accompanied by multiple projections of the word “traitor” and the phrase “it shall be so” being sequentially added to the back wall.

Coriolanus lashed out at the “common cry of curs” telling them “I banish you”, throwing his garland back at them. He was spotlit centre stage to pronounce “There is a world elsewhere” shadowed by Volumnia, who sat behind him, cried and then came forward for 4.1.

Coriolanus bade farewell to his family by first commiserating with a very distraught Volumnia who had come forward at the end of 3.3 (4.1). Cominius returned the sword he had previously confiscated from Coriolanus, in a gesture of comradely solidarity with his fellow soldier.

The first half ended as Coriolanus returned centre stage to be pelted with rotten tomatoes by citizens shouting “It shall be so!”

At the start of the second half, a shadowy figure in ragged clothes huddled by the back wall as the tribunes met with Volumnia and Virgilia. The women were furious with them. Volumnia was haughty and disdainful, but was met with confident sarcasm from Sicinia, while Virgilia ran at them in fury (4.2).

Volumnia shoved away Menenius’ comforting hand as he invited her to dinner, insisting bitterly “anger’s my meat: I sup upon myself”. She composed herself and addressed Virgilia, telling her to “leave this faint puling”. She adjusted Virgilia’s hair and smartened her up, but only as an aid to stiffening her resolve.

By encouraging her daughter-in-law to be “Juno-like”, Volumnia was drawing comfort from the prospect of making Virgilia more like her. This change from her earlier disdain for Virgilia marked the beginning of a deeper reconciliation that would culminate in their mutual support in their final scene.

Scene 4.3 was cut. Coriolanus disguised in his rags, slumped at the back of the stage, rose up and asked the way to Aufidius’ house (4.4). He tried to gain entry but was turned back by one of the female servants (Rochenda Sandall again) who stood toe-to-toe and comically nose-to-nose with Coriolanus in an attempt to intimidate him into leaving (4.5). He brushed her aside contemptuously, telling her to “batten on cold bits”.

Aufidius caught up with him and Coriolanus initially turned away, unsure as to whether to reveal himself. But he turned to face Aufidius and took off his hood. Aufidius still did not recognise him and asked his name several times.

Coriolanus spoke his name, causing the other Volscians to start with fear at being in the presence of their arch enemy. During Coriolanus’ long explanation of how he had arrived there, one of Aufidius’ men slowly drew his dagger and crept up very slowly behind Coriolanus. A further note of tension was introduced as Coriolanus took a step backwards, forcing the stealthy killer to retreat as well, with the ever-present possibility that he might be detected. Coriolanus sank to his knees and the killer positioned his blade just above Coriolanus’ back. He fixed Aufidius with his gaze, indicating that he had only to give the word and the blade would be thrust between his foe’s shoulder blades.

Coriolanus offered up his throat for him to cut. Aufidius moved behind the kneeling Coriolanus and took the blade from his comrade and held it near to Coriolanus’ throat.

Aufidius paused for a while before exclaiming “O Martius, Martius” and declared his friendship. But Coriolanus was still nervously anticipating the fatal blow so that when Aufidius briskly made a sudden cutting movement without making actual contact, Coriolanus momentarily mistook this for the coup de grace and collapsed forward in panic. He recovered once he felt that his throat was still intact.

Aufidius knelt down in front of Coriolanus, held him in his arms and then kissed him on the lips. But he immediately stood up and with slight abashment explained “Know thou first, I loved the maid I married” to audience titters. This mirth was reignited when Aufidius grasped him once more, this time standing up, and spoke of how he had “nightly since dreamt of encounters” between them.

Aufidius offered him joint leadership and some Volscian armour was given to him. The comedy serving men sequence was cut, but humour was introduced at the end of the scene. Once the main players had exited, the other Volscians looked at each other in open-mouthed amazement at Aufidius’ unexpected embracement of his former enemy.

Couple

Back in Rome, Sicinia and Brutus were very happy. The couple sat close together, Brutus with his arm round Sicinia’s shoulder, as they exuded smug self-congratulation at getting Coriolanus banished (4.6).

Confident that they now had the upper hand, they took no heed of Menenius’ upset at Coriolanus’ departure. Some citizens passed by and thanked the tribunes, presenting them with a bowl of grapes.

However, their calm was short-lived. A messenger (not identified as an Aedile) brought news of a report of a Volscian invasion. The tribunes wanted the “rumourer” whipped, but Menenius realised that the rumour was probably true.

Another messenger reported that Coriolanus had joined with Aufidius. The tribunes dismissed this as yet more idle talk and Menenius agreed that this was “unlikely”. But a second messenger called him to the Senate, confirming the truth of it.

Cominius stormed in and joined with Menenius in castigating the static seated tribunes, whose fixed position highlighted their fear and indecision. They were surrounded, with a military man on one side and an intellectual on the other. Criticism from these divergent types brought out the totality of the opposition to them.

The citizens were now abashed and denied that they had ever meant to banish Coriolanus. Others were fearful of how to placate him. The Tribunes could only tell them not to be afraid, but once they were left alone, Brutus’ remark “I do not like this news” as he sat still holding the grapes, drew laughter from audience for its comical redundancy.

Aufidius and his Lieutenant sat and mithered about Coriolanus’ increasing popularity (4.7). Speaking of how fire drives out fire and one nail another, he vowed menacingly that “When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor’st of all; then shortly art thou mine”.

Cominius returned from his failed meeting with Coriolanus and kicked over a chair before crouching disconsolate at the back of the stage (5.1). The position and posture he adopted were eerily similar to that Coriolanus had been in when lurking on stage at the start of the second half.

Menenius initially refused to petition Coriolanus because the general had met with failure. But Sicinia’s pleading, together with his own conviction that Coriolanus would be more malleable after dinner, persuaded him to try.

Cominius described how Coriolanus “does sit in gold, his eye red as ‘twould burn Rome” while Coriolanus went to his chair.

Menenius arrived at the Volscian camp and was intercepted by two guards (5.2). His high-handed “do you know who I am?” approach resulted in rebuff.

Coriolanus and Aufidius, overhearing the commotion, came to see what was happening. Menenius proudly and disdainfully promised the “jack guardant” that he was in trouble for keeping him out.

Menenius appeared to let slip a great secret. His phrasing of “my son Coriolanus” cut short the word “son” before continuing with “Coriolanus” as if inadvertently hinting at his paternity.

He approached Coriolanus and knelt to weep tears onto his gloved hand. He asked pardon for Rome, requesting that after making peace any remnant of Coriolanus’ anger be directed at the “varlet” who had “denied my access to thee”.

Without saying anything, Coriolanus wagged his finger disapprovingly at the guard, giving Menenius the impression that he was about to fulfil his wish. The wagging continued and became more mocking until Coriolanus laughed, making plain that his gesture was entirely playful. He turned brusquely to Menenius and very softly ordered him “Away”.

Coriolanus vowed that he was a stranger even to his family and that he had only compassion for the Volscians. He gave Menenius a letter which the despondent man briefly read and then dropped to the ground on exiting. The guards made fun of Menenius for having predicted they would get into trouble.

His ominous “He that hath a will to die by himself fears it not from another” became a real premonition of his suicide, because after his exit from this scene the cuts to the remainder of text meant he was never seen again. This was reminiscent of the character’s absence from the final Roman scenes in the Ralph Fiennes film.

Coriolanus picked up the discarded letter and passed it to Aufidius, demonstrating that there were no secrets between them. With continuous action, Coriolanus and Aufidius discussed laying siege to Rome the next day (5.3). Coriolanus ironically vowed that he would not listen to any more suits from “state nor private friends”.

The women processed onstage: first Virgilia, then Volumnia holding Young Martius’ hand and finally Valeria. They walked along stage front and then round behind to stand upstage right. Coriolanus watched and commented.

Virgilia slowly curtsied before his empty chair with a fixed beatific smile on her face, which indicated that somehow Coriolanus was speaking to us from outside the reality of their arrival and we were seeing the event through his shocked eyes. Volumnia and Young Martius bowed their heads.

Coriolanus returned to sit in his chair centre stage at which point he entered into the field of Virgilia’s gaze. She came alive, the staged version of the sequence now reflecting reality as Virgilia addressed him as “My lord and husband”. She sat on his lap, brushing away his protestation that “These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome”, and kissed him.

As she continued to sit in his lap, her right hand ventured down to his crotch at which point Coriolanus seemed to sense that he might give in to her. He rose briskly, brushing Virgilia aside and spoke to his mother, going down on one knee.

Volumnia bid him stand and then abased herself fully with her head to the ground and her arms outstretched. The disparity between the two gestures exemplified Volumnia’s greater desperation.

She asked if Coriolanus knew Valeria. He visibly scrambled around in his memory to draw up her potted biography, which he then quoted to signify his recognition. His son was also presented to him and he bowed a knee to his father.

Volumnia pressed on with their request, despite admitting that he would not grant them anything. She explained their predicament, concluding that her son would tread on her womb. Virgilia agreed, coming to stand in front of him, saying “Ay, and mine” showing him Young Martius, with the lad saying he would fight when he was bigger.

Coriolanus made to go but Volumnia stopped him, maintaining that he could win fame and honour by reconciling the Romans and Volscians. She approached him and tried to touch his face saying “Speak to me, son” but he recoiled from her.

He turned his back on her barbed comments, which prompted Volumnia to instruct her party to kneel. They abased themselves face down with their hands outstretched. Volumnia rose hoping to draw Coriolanus’ attention to his entreating son. Still turned away from his family, Coriolanus’ eyes began to water as he listened to her.

Her final barbed comment that “this fellow had a Volscian to his mother, his wife is in Corioles and his child like him by chance” seemed to do the trick.

Without any great pause, Coriolanus simply turned, approached his mother and said “O, mother, mother! What have you done?” But his words were disappointingly flat and expressionless.

This was the dramatic climax of the play, the point at which the oncoming express train of Coriolanus’ force is derailed by his mother’s disapproval. But rather than seeing a great man brought low, Hiddleston seemed too dispassionate, a few leaky tears the only sign of his emotions.

This powerful moment of hushed tension is supposed to herald the cataclysmic breakdown of Coriolanus the colossus war machine. But this version was calm to the point of being featureless, his monotone delivery at odds with the enormity of his change of heart.

However, it was possible that the direction was following the description of Coriolanus at this moment in Peter Holland’s programme note, which pictured him as “no longer angry but strangely calm as he anticipates so clear-sightedly his own death”.

Aufidius remarked laconically that he “was moved withal”. But we knew trouble was coming despite the fact that Aufidius’ menacing aside was cut.

Volumnia looked shocked and astounded at this turn around. Coriolanus congratulated the women on having obtained peace and bade them farewell with kisses and hugs for his family which neatly contrasted with his previous coldness and distance.

The scenes in Rome (5.4/5.5) were cut. The action moved straight to Aufidius’ direct confrontation with Coriolanus with much of the start of 5.6 also cut.

Aufidius began by telling his fellow Volscians to inform “the lords o’the’ city” about events, but suddenly turned on Coriolanus screaming that he was a traitor. He shouted the accusations from around l.20 relating to how he had taken Coriolanus into his trust, and then elaborated how his friend had betrayed that trust by concluding the present peace.

The rapidly-paced sequence picked up from around l.87 with Aufidius’ accusation of treachery, Coriolanus’ retort and Aufidius deliberately addressing him as “Martius”, not using “that robbery, thy stolen name”, all compounded with the insulting epithet “Boy”.

Martius, in line with the highlighting of his death premonition, threw away his sword and invited them to “Cut me to pieces”.

He was beaten to the ground, a chain was attached to his feet and he was hoisted up. Aufidius took a blade and lunged it into Coriolanus’ stomach. He writhed briefly as his blood drained from him.

Aufidius crouched beneath and bathed his head in the flow, saying “hold, hold”. His rage had gone and he promised that Coriolanus would have a noble memory.

Petals fell from the flies as Volumnia came and stood upstage right. Aufidius’ face lit up as he beamed under the shower of Coriolanus’ blood. A child’s voice sang the celebratory words of cut scene 5.5. The lights went out on Aufidius finally fulfilling his wish to wash his “fierce hand in’s heart”.

Conclusions

The fans wanted to give Hiddleston “the whole name of the war” but he was not the most interesting part of the production.

The stiff upper lip understatement in the final scene was either disappointing for anyone expecting passionate emotional fireworks or alternatively could be seen as an intelligent reading emphasising Coriolanus’ fatalism.

Deborah Findlay captured perfectly Volumnia’s combination of ferocity and vulnerability.

Elsewhere, Virgilia was given a greater role through her continuous reactions to events and by her presence at points where does not normally appear. She was made to appear a very unwilling conscript into Coriolanus’ military family.

The casting of Birgitte Hjort Sørensen as Virgilia was a clever move. Her Danish accent was a constant reminder of her otherness, a characteristic that mirrored and underscored the production’s emphasis on Virgilia’s outsider status amid the militaristic family into which she had married.

Making one of the tribunes female allowed their collusion to turn into a nascent love affair. These are characters who for all their flaws offer a vague hope of a better democratic future.

This detailing of the minor characters contrasted with the neglect of the minor characters in that other recent star vehicle, the Grandage Henry V.

   

The Wooden Novell-O

Henry V, Novello Theatre, 6 December 2013

The curved, mud splattered palisade that formed the back of the Henry V set was strikingly similar to the structure used by the recent Globe production of Macbeth.

So when the Chorus (Ashley Zhangazha) emerged and spoke of “this wooden O”, the Novello resounded with a clear echo of Bankside.

Establishing such a connection inside a proscenium arch space was incredibly clever, and typical of other thoughtful touches in the staging.

The Chorus was dressed in jeans and union jack t-shirt. His request that we should use our imaginations and his apology for the “unworthy scaffold” made him seem part of the crew rather than a character within the production. The sound of neighing encouraged us to visualise horses.

He was a modern figure talking to us as our immediate contemporary, which rendered the ensuing action effectively a play within that play.

The Chorus stood aside and watched the opening scene and later played other characters, most notably the Boy.

The palisade centre doors pulled back to reveal King Henry (Jude Law) sitting on a throne reading messages and issuing orders.

The audience had after all paid to see Jude Law and so the production gave them an early glimpse of him, which provided something for people to look at while Ely (Richard Clifford) and Canterbury (Michael Hadley) discussed the Salic Law and Henry’s claim to France (1.1).

The clerics remained onstage as Henry rose from the throne and came forward to speak with them, effectively merging the first two scenes into one sequence (1.2).

Jude Law was very convincing as a king, adopting a powerful wide-legged posture, his hands cutting through the air with strong emphatic gestures.

If the British royal family count as mega-celebrities, then conversely mega-celebrities can been seen as royalty: consequently a celebrity of Jude Law’s standing and acting talent becomes a natural choice to play a stage king, because his own aura of fame elides with that of Henry’s kingship.

The production was built around the star turn and this reflected the way in which the play revolves around its central character. The king’s reign was not an ensemble production and neither was this.

Canterbury’s long genealogy with its semi-comic pay-off “So that, as clear as if the summer’s sun” was cut removing a moment of potential comedy from the start.

But the reference to the “weasel scot” got a laugh when Henry’s nobles were persuading him of the need to lay claim to France and make war preparations including defending against opportunistic Scottish incursion.

Canterbury’s long concluding speech was shortened of its ruminations on social hierarchy so that he merely advocated dividing England into four.

The Ambassador from France (Prasanna Puwanarajah) entered while an attendant carried in a chest. Exeter (James Laurenson) looked inside and saw that the Dauphin had presented a gift of tennis balls.

King Henry’s responded to this slight with measured anger, tipping his crown askew in self-mockery when referring to his previous “barbarous licence”. But he extended his “rightful hand” threateningly towards the Ambassador to make plain his warlike intent.

At once energetic and animated, Henry ordered preparations for the now inevitable war.

Having observed events from upstage, the Chorus came forward and introduced us to the three traitors who skulked at the side, before setting the scene at Southampton (2.0)

The action continued with 2.2, linking the traitors’ first mention with the scene in which their treachery is uncovered.

The plotters stood in a loose group stage right and Henry joined them, ensuring that they overheard his leniency to a drunk who had insulted him.

They were given their arrest warrants instead of their orders, upon which Cambridge (Ian Drysdale) pleaded briefly for mercy and all kneeled hoping for clemency. Henry rebuked them, raising each in turn from their kneeling position to berate them individually.

Exeter arrested them, prompting extended pleading from all three. Henry had gone to stand at far stage left avoiding their sight. But he could still hear their pleas, and his bowed head indicated the pain of his dilemma.

But his resolute response was not long coming. He turned and shouted “God quit you in his mercy!” firmly denying them any hope of mercy.

The guards who had kept their hands poised on their sword hilts now drew their blades to escort the three to execution.

Once the main event had passed there was a feeling that we were passing on to the comedy filler of the lower class soldiers: Nym (Norman Bowman), Bardolph (Jason Baughan) and Pistol (Ron Cook) (2.1). The comic rivalry over the Hostess (Noma Dumezweni) between Nym and Pistol with his rakish hat and swishing sword of “flashing fire”, was very entertaining.

The Chorus took the role of the Boy, still in his jeans and t-shirt and with a modern rucksack and metal water container. His presence in an actual role within the production as opposed to his choric function became intriguing and pleasantly disconcerting. Our contemporary commentator had become part of the story he was telling.

The presence of fleurs-de-lys and French blue indicated the shift of the action to France (2.4). Exeter presented Henry’s “pedigree” in a bound volume. He spoke very quickly all the time, possibly to help shorten the run time.

The French were not jokey caricatures, but the Dauphin (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) was portrayed as the weaker of the group so that Exeter’s slight mispronunciation of the Dauphin’s name provoked the slight heir to respond.

The soldiers said their farewells before leaving for France, whilst also taking time to bid goodbye to the recently deceased Falstaff (2.3). Quickly’s adieu to the men led directly into the Chorus taking us forward on our imaginary journey and back to France.

The Chorus weaved a verbal image of the war preparations (3.0). The mention of the “nimble gunner” touching the “devilish cannon” did not trigger massive explosions but merely a rumble of noise.

The alarum at the start of 3.1 saw the English army forced back from behind the central opening in the palisade stage left amid a cloud of smoke and noise of artillery. The English rallied and made another assault but were similarly repulsed.

These failed attempts were the background to King Henry’s exhortation to them to go “once more unto the breach”.

His general address to them turned into a practical pep talk. He breathed in demonstrating how to “stretch the nostril wide” and the soldiers imitated him. He addressed a “good yeoman” and spoke to rally the spirits of one of the soldiers crouched on the ground.

The army became vocally responsive to his encouragement and grew visibly more confident so that when he described them as “greyhounds in the slips” this was an accurate image of their renewed fighting spirit.

He drew another soldier’s sword and handed it to him and then led a massive charge with the army following him to storm through the breach.

Oratory

Bardolph, Nym and Pistol accompanied by the Boy were left behind to undercut the brave sentiments of Henry’s rousing oratory (3.2). Fluellen drove them onward leaving the Boy/Chorus to describe their villainy and cowardice.

The character of Jamy was cut leaving Fluellen (Matt Ryan) attempting to discuss the war with Macmorris (Christopher Heyward) until the besieged town of Harfleur sounded a parlay.

The Harfleur governor (Rhys Meredith) was brought in and fell to the ground surrounded by Henry and his eager, angry and newly invigorated army.

As his threats of retribution against the townsfolk if they did not surrender grew more insistent, the army growled their support and edged forward so that the prone figure of the governor was overwhelmed by them.

The Governor rose to report that the Dauphin could not assist them and then invited the English to enter the town. He knelt on the ground for mercy, but Henry, embarrassed at this grovelling, pulled him to his feet, restoring the man’s dignity and going someway to making up for the gory threats he had made against Harfleur’s populace.

Kate’s (Jessie Buckley) French lesson was not played excessively for comedy and she was rather restrained when repeating the English version of the list of body parts (3.4). The mispronunciations of foot and gown produced the strongest swearwords: the French “foutre” and the English “countt”. Rather than letting “coun” sound like the French “con” a t was added to the end to make it sound like an English swear word, which obviously would not have been offensive to the French.

This was possibly designed to make plainer the offensive nature of at least one of her pronunciation errors.

In a very interesting move, these French-speaking French were then met and greeted by the king (Richard Clifford again), who embraced his daughter, and his nobles, who proceeded in their subsequent scene to speak in English. Having these two mutually exclusive worlds impossibly on stage at the same time strongly underscored the language switch, which can otherwise pass unnoticed.

The French were worried by the English advance but nevertheless Montjoy was sent to demand Henry’s ransom (3.5).

We returned to the battlefield and the rumble of war with Gower, Fluellen and Pistol (3.6). We learnt from Pistol that Bardolph was to be hanged for theft. Fluellen supported this punishment which prompted the comedy of Pistol giving him the fig and storming off.

Henry asked Fluellen about their losses and also heard about Bardolph. He knelt downstage with his face uplit. He paused and wished “all such offenders so cut off” with no flicker of remorse. Anyone unfamiliar with the backstory from Henry IV 1&2 might not have remarked on this being personally painful for him.

Montjoy demanded that Henry ransom himself. The king bravely rebuked him, but stood alone at the end facing the audience to give them a long meaningful look before the lights went up for the interval.

The Chorus came onstage before the start of the second half and lay on his back reading an edition of Henry V, then stood to tell us about the preparations at Agincourt (4.0).

Night-time at the English camp saw the rear of the set become a starry background, and fires appeared from under several small traps around which troops huddled (4.1).

Henry spoke with Erpingham framed by the starry background. He stared at the soldiers further downstage and seemed inspired by this sight to visit them. He first met the drunk Pistol and had to pass himself off as Welshman Harry le Roy.

Over on stage right, the comedy continued as Gower (Harry Atwell) introduced himself too loudly and Fluellen had to quieten him.

Henry coarsened his accent slightly when he spoke to Williams (Norman Bowman again) and his comrades. He looked troubled by Williams’ description of the mutilated bodies of the war dead and how they would one day rise to accuse their king, so that when he seized on the minor point in Williams’ proposition about his liability for the soldiers’ souls and countered it, this seemed a device to avoid the major point Williams had made, enabling Henry to avoid contemplating the horrors of war and simultaneously position himself as victim.

After taking Williams’ gage, Henry launched into his soliloquy about the injustice of heaping all responsibility onto the monarch’s shoulders, which in the context of the above came across as an avoidance strategy.

After Erpingham’s brief interruption, Henry faced forward to call on the “God of battles” to bolster his troops. He fell to his knees pleading with God not to think on his father’s fault and listed the good works he had done. This could be seen as a crisis in part provoked by Williams and postponed by the king’s prevarication.

The French battle preparations saw them staring out at the audience, indicating their fascination with the distant enemy and suggesting their nervousness (3.7). Their banter about horses became enthused with a similar trepidation. The scene merged into 4.2 in which a messenger informed them the battle was about to commence.

The despondent English advanced in formation through the centre doors and faced the audience (4.3). Westmoreland (Edward Harrison) stated grimly that the French had 60,000 men, which Exeter calculated to be a 5-1 advantage.

They wished each other luck, but Westmoreland hoped to be joined by a fraction of those not working that day in England. Henry appeared behind them and contradicted Westmoreland’s desire for reinforcements.

Henry worked his rhetorical magic once more on the dispirited English, saying that their situation offered either a small loss of life or a great share of honour. As he described the aftermath of victory and the fame of the lauded combatants, the soldiers were again roused by the prospect of success.

Amid murmurs of encouragement, Henry named them in turn prompting yet more enthusiastic responses. And once again he modified his accent to imitate one of his common soldiers bragging “These wounds I had…”

The army was highly energised and ready to go, which made their response to Montjoy’s renewed demand for Henry’s ransom very predictable.

With each staccato phrase of Henry’s severe rebuke, the soldiers chanted and advanced with a stomping gait on the terrified Montjoy.

The feverish enthusiasm of the army was shared by York who, typifying the refreshed vigour of the English, brightly requested “the leading of the vaward”. The mood had now been completely transformed from the despondency of the start of the scene, and the contrast was clearly brought out.

At some point a soldier spat at the mention of ransom, possibly when Henry said he feared Montjoy would return again to ask for it.

The battle began with alarums and excursions as soldiers rushed across the stage (4.4). The comedy of Pistol’s capture of “Signieur Dew” (Jason Baughan again) was given a tricksy edge by the presence of the Boy, still in jeans and rucksack, acting as interpreter. On being offered a ransom of two hundred crowns, Pistol sheathed his sword saying “my fury shall abate”.

The Boy/Chorus then hinted heavily at how lightly the luggage was guarded.

Two brief scenes showed the French rallying after a setback (4.5) and the English during a brief respite in the battle (4.6). With the French challenging them again, Henry ordered the prisoners to be killed.

Poys

The Boy was carried away by a French soldier and killed offstage (4.7). This prompted Fluellen’s great line “Kill the poys and the luggage!” The sourness of the incident was then immediately undercut by the comedy routine sparked off by Fluellen referring to Alexander the Pig. This proved to be the laugh out loud moment in the performance.

Henry said that he was angry at the killing of the boys, but if so he was keeping it mostly suppressed. The French messenger Montjoy knelt and offered his sword as a gesture of surrender. Giving thanks for the victory, King Henry knelt as did Fluellen who, full of feeling for his compatriot, reminded Henry of his Welshness. His remark about the water of the Wye not being able to wash the king’s Welsh blood from him was yet more comic undercutting of an otherwise serious moment.

Henry spotted Williams and tricked Fluellen into wearing his glove. He sent Williams away to fetch Gower, but did not send Fluellen after him. Williams simply returned and found Fluellen with the king’s glove stuffed ridiculously under his hat.

After a brief altercation, Henry came forward and revealed to Williams that it was he whom he had struck (5.8). Williams’ contrition earned him a glove full of gold crowns. Fluellen comically followed after him to offer him a shilling to mend his shoes.

After all this laughter the note with the number of dead was delivered. There was a huge discrepancy between number of English and French dead. Henry seemed moved, but his character was too full of confidence and had been too gung-ho in his warlike posturing ever to be upset at enemy deaths.

The Chorus at the start of act five was cut, so we went straight into 5.1 without the long meandering journey via Blackheath.

Fluellen caught up with Pistol and beat him until he ate a leek (5.1). Pistol peeled off some outer layers of the vegetable and threw them away before forced to chow down. But our sympathies returned to Pistol when he told us that Quickly had died.

The English party with Henry at the fore appeared from stage right to meet the French entering the other side. The French were led by their king holding his daughter’s hand as if escorting her to the altar in marriage and thereby offering her as part of the peace treaty (5.2).

Henry’s early mention of her in his opening words underscored how important she was to the settlement.

The role of Queen Isabel was cut, making Katherine the only woman of rank in the encounter. There was no Duke of Burgundy and his part was trimmed and given to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Further discussion about the treaty was needed, so Exeter was sent to negotiate with the King of France. Henry made sure that Katherine, “our capital demand”, was left with him.

Katherine, who appeared to have been treated as a gift in the diplomatic horse trading, unsurprisingly looked cold and nervous as Henry began his overtures to her. She could not or would not understand his entreaties and this produced the comedy of Alice’s (Noma Dumezweni again) consecutive interpretation.

Henry put his crown aside and placed great emphasis on his declaration “I love you”.

The scene then became utterly charming as Henry’s gauche wooing slowly thawed her icy defences, particularly when he tried to speak in broken French, so that eventually one of her broken English put downs was said smilingly as if happy with his attentions.

Henry put his crown back on to emphasise that in taking him, she would “take a king”. The audience laughed at his joke about not being the enemy of France because he loved it so much that he would not part with a village of it.

The king wanted to seal their betrothal with a kiss and the couple knelt. But she was unwilling and explained in French that kissing before marriage was not the custom in her country. Henry was so keen by this stage, that his excuse that “nice customs curtsy to great kings” was wonderfully witty.

They eventually kissed kneeling on the floor, which made their embarrassment the greater when the others returned, prompting Henry’s farcical “Here comes your father”.

This moment of comedy rounded off what had been a perfectly delightful sequence.

The marriage was agreed and the terms settled, but much of the detail of these arrangements was cut.

Queen Isabel’s lines about combining the couple’s two hearts in one were given to Canterbury and made the accompaniment to a form of wedding ceremony with him joining their hands as they looked out at the audience. The ceremonial aspect was enhanced by his phrase “God speak this Amen!” with everyone responding “Amen!”

At this point, the action froze and the Chorus came forward to end the story, still in his jeans and t-shirt, speaking the epilogue on behalf of the author. He pointed out on a depressive note that their son Henry VI’s reign would result in the loss of France and strife in England.

The charm of the wooing sequence and the strong emphasis on marriage at end made the final scene into a powerful, positive statement about love, to the extent that the whole war could be seen as merely the prologue to it.

Conclusions

A celebrity Shakespeare production like this has to prove that its central attraction merits attention. And this was done. The only weak point to the production was that in its attempt to provide a suitable vehicle for Jude Law, the Eastcheap characters were neglected and their world made to feel less important than that of the king.

The best versions of Henry V feel like an ensemble in which Pistol, Bardolph and Nym are as well-detailed, and their fates as significant, as those of their alleged betters.

There was much to praise in the detailing of the king’s royal progress, and in particular the meshing of the Chorus into the story, but the rest felt neglected and this was to the detriment of the whole.

Hair

Richard II, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 19 October 2013

A coffin rested on a stand centre stage before a backdrop of a Gothic arched interior, which was projected onto six overlapping beaded curtains, three each side of the upstage area.

Ten minutes before the start the Duchess of Gloucester (Jane Lapotaire) was escorted to the coffin, her widow’s weeds and faltering progress indicating her extremity of grief. She knelt on a stool and draped herself over one end and rested there.

Up in the gallery three women sang as the funeral crowd gathered. Gaunt (Michael Pennington) and York (Oliver Ford Davies) comforted the Duchess of Gloucester before drawing aside.

Richard swept in to adjudicate the dispute between Bolingbroke (Nigel Lindsay) and Mowbray (Antony Byrne) (1.1).

David Tennant’s Richard was a striking visual presence in his long hair and flowing gown, yet the most salient aspect of his character, present from the start and maintained throughout, was his total unlikeability.

He spoke with an affected accent, exuded disdain for those around him far stronger than regal distance, and had a habit of either looking down his nose at people or talking while facing away from them.

Despite the hair and feminine gowns, his cold aggression and strutting created an ever-present atmosphere of menace.

The strange accent was patently not the result of David Tennant’s inability to speak convincing RP; it was nevertheless deliberately contrived to enhance the impression that the king’s regal airs were a front.

Tennant’s Richard exemplified the ideas that are expounded during his downfall: that his self-image is as brittle as a mirror and that in being king he had merely been allowed to play “a little scene, to monarchize”. Right from the start, this Richard was playing a part: an inauthentic character whose fakery was bolstered by his grim determination to preserve his authority.

Richard talked to Gaunt and summoned Bolingbroke and Mowbray. They knelt before him with their backs to the audience. Richard offered a limp hand when saying “Yet one but flatters us”, before reading from a paper handed to him about “the cause you come”.

The guests that had gathered for the wake became increasingly disturbed by the vehemence of the dispute, particularly when Bolingbroke accused Mowbray of being behind Gloucester’s death. At this point many of them, including York and his Duchess, left with huffs of disgust.

At 1.1.107 Richard went to confer with Bushy (Sam Marks), Bagot (Jake Mann) and Green (Marcus Griffiths), his favourites, before returning to remark sarcastically “How high a pitch his resolution soars”.

Something about Mowbray’s denial of his involvement in Gloucester’s death was unconvincing. Saying that he had “neglected my sworn duty in that case” was a vague, evasive statement.

Richard wanted them to make peace: “This we prescribe, though no physician”. He lingered over the four syllables of “physician” as if conscious of its metre. This could have been seen as his awareness of his own theatricality in ‘monarchizing’. When he said “Our doctors say this is no time to bleed” he claque of favourites applauded sycophantically.

Gaunt and Richard tried to get the adversaries to throw down the gages they had both picked up.

Mowbray and Bolingbroke ignored these entreaties. Their enmity reached a high point as they growled at each other nose to nose, causing Richard to pound his warder onto Gloucester’s coffin and exclaim that he was “not born to sue but to command”. This outburst and accompanying loud bang demonstrated that below Richard’s outward serenity there flowed a dark undercurrent of intemperate violence.

Richard ordered them to settle their dispute through trial by combat at Coventry.

The others exited to leave Gaunt alone with the Duchess of Gloucester still leaning over her husband’s coffin (1.2). Jane Lapotaire was excellent as she rose to castigate Gaunt for “suff’ring thus thy brother to be slaughtered”. Her tongue curdled the air as she pronounced the phrases “fell Mowbray” and “butcher Mowbray”.

Then, imagining Mowbray’s defeat at Bolingbroke’s hands, she viciously relished the prospect of this revenge being visited on the “caitiff recreant”.

Her vacillations and faltering memory became in Lapotaire’s performance the painful witnesses of the Duchess’s extreme emotional distress that exacerbated her physical frailty. Her condition in this scene made the subsequent news of her death entirely credible. Her repeated “Desolate, desolate” was particularly powerful.

And with a quaint device a gantry was flown in bearing the throne (1.3). Richard and his party entered the gantry from the sides once it was in position above the stage. He sat on the throne with his queen to his right and his favourites to his left. The projection became brighter to indicate the outdoor location.

Bolingbroke and Mowbray were summoned to fight. They appeared in full armour and had holy water sprinkled on them. Bolingbroke was shorter, squatter and rougher than both Richard and Mowbray. His short hair formed a distinct contrast to Richard’s long plait.

Bolingbroke asked to kiss Richard’s hand. Bagot whispered in Richard’s ear after which, presumably on his favourite’s advice, the king agreed to descend, at which point all the favourites applauded him.

Richard descended the stairway and kissed Bolingbroke on the cheek. Despite Richard’s physical proximity to Bolingbroke, he still radiated emotional coldness.

Bolingbroke addressed “I take my leave of you” to Richard who, now at the end of their exchange, offered his hand for Bolingbroke to kiss and then returned to the gantry, pointedly ignoring Mowbray as he passed him.

Mowbray’s address to Richard was spoken downstage facing the audience. Its cold reception from those onstage and Richard’s cool response indicated the extent to which Mowbray was out of favour.

The combatants were given long swords and began to fight. After some brief skirmishes, Richard dropped his warder casually without drawing attention to himself. As king, he expected his every gesture to be noticed anyway. However, Bolingbroke and Mowbray did not notice and so the Lord Marshall (Simon Thorp) had to intervene to separate them.

Richard descended again and went upstage to confer with his favourites. He called in Gaunt, who would later reference this conference. The Lord Marshall twice ordered the trumpets to sound a flourish in order to fill out the time. But the second time he gestured at them to strike up, Richard immediately returned, forcing the Lord Marshall to signal them to stop and thereby injecting a note of comedy into the proceedings.

Richard exiled Bolingbroke but permanently banished Mowbray, who did not accept this punishment with good grace.

Mowbray objected to his banishment, but Richard simply turned away from him, leaving the duke to address his futile complaint to Richard’s back. In frustration at this snub, at 1.3.171 Mowbray exclaimed “What! Is thy sentence then but speechless death” and grabbed Richard’s hand as he passed.

Richard quickly retracted his hand and The Lord Marshall drew his sword on Mowbray in response to this apparent treason. Richard did not respond to the affront, but merely extended his hand out of the way as if to say ‘I’ve noticed this insult, so watch it; but I’m not that bothered as my people will deal with you’. An overt reaction would have been beneath him, but his casual response to the buffeting carried a threat of heavy retribution.

Richard took the Lord Marshall’s drawn sword and made the combatants swear not to plot against him. There was a feverishness to this demand, resulting from Richard’s cognisance of Mowbray’s barely concealed animosity towards him.

Bolingbroke offered Mowbray a chance to admit his involvement in Gloucester’s death. Mowbray paused at length before refusing to do so.

Seeing Gaunt’s tears at his son’s sentence, Richard deducted four years from Bolingbroke’s exile, producing yet more sycophantic applause from his favourites. But Bolingbroke’s stern reaction to this seemed more a critique of royal prerogative than gratitude for the reprieve.

Gaunt tried to cheer him up, but Bolingbroke could only look at the ground. Bolingbroke bid farewell by touching England’s “sweet soil”. It was possible that the relative restraint of this gesture was meant to stick in our minds, later to be contrasted with the elaborate effusion of Richard’s greeting to the same soil on his return from Ireland.

Mirror

Richard was found changing clothes while looking in a mirror (1.4). This early instance of Richard with a mirror was a nod and a wink to those familiar with the play, pointing towards the cracked mirror in the deposition scene.

As Aumerle (Oliver Rix) approached, Richard’s favourites turned and whispered to the king conspiratorially. Richard broke off from the huddle, with his first words “We did observe” forming a reply to them. He asked Aumerle slyly about what had happened when he had accompanied Bolingbroke on his departure. His brief, terse questions indicated his suspicion, while his preening in the mirror spoke of his vanity.

Tennant did a good job of conveying the sense of the potentially opaque phrase “whether our kinsman come to see his friends”, making it plain that Richard saw this possible visitation as a threat.

Richard mocked Bolingbroke, but became angry when remarking “As were our England in reversion his” revealing Richard’s fears of being usurped.

He decided to go to Ireland just before news came of Gaunt’s illness. He held up his own garment to comment that dead Gaunt’s riches would “make coats to deck our soldiers”.

Gaunt was visibly haggard and feverish when he was helped onstage by York (2.1). A chair was provided for him, but initially Gaunt stood as the consistently grumpy York explained how Richard would not heed good advice as his ear was “stopped with other, flatt’ring sounds”.

Gaunt launched into the iconic “royal throne of kings” speech while York stood close by and nodded vigorously in agreement with the various elements of his long complaint.

The royal party entered with a flourish on the stage left walkway. Richard’s initial cold greeting to Gaunt developed into pity and witty sparring between them, until Gaunt launched into his second long speech attacking Richard directly. He sat to save his strength before telling Richard “I see thee ill” and pointing at the king’s favourites to single them out as “those physicians that first wounded thee”.

Richard interrupted him, angrily dragged Gaunt from his chair and grabbed him forcefully round the neck, thereby amplifying his threat to remove Gaunt’s head “from thy unreverent shoulders”. The king’s anger turned to physical aggression, possibly with a conscious determination to shorten the life of this “Lunatic lean-witted fool”.

Gaunt weakened noticeably at the end of his final rant at Richard and was taken way upstage right. Richard pursued him, urging “And let them die that age and sullens have”, words that seemed to express the intention behind his rough treatment of the sick man.

York tried to assuage the angry king, but Richard only delighted in picking him up on his comparison between Gaunt and Hereford, sarcastically implying that Gaunt was similarly disliked.

Northumberland (Sean Chapman) returned to announce that Gaunt had died. This was all the more shocking because Gaunt was visibly younger than York, which made his passing appear very untimely and far from the result of natural causes.

York knelt in prayer and rued the death of his brother. Richard approached and put a comforting hand on his back. The apparent respect behind his comforting references to how “The ripest fruit first falls” and “our pilgrimage” was undercut when Richard brusquely clapped him on the back and turned away with a curt “So much for that”. Tennant’s emotionally cold interpretation of Richard was fully warranted by the character’s behaviour at this point.

Richard dispatched his favourites to seize Gaunt’s property, tersely dismissing York’s objections to the disinheritance of Bolingbroke.

Bushy, Bagot and Green returned with silverware and other goods as the expropriation went ahead.

As the royal party began to leave, Richard enjoined his sour-faced queen (Emma Hamilton) to “Be merry”. This highlighted her depressed mood, of which she spoke herself in the next scene.

Northumberland and his associates were left behind to criticise the injustice of Richard’s rule, after which Northumberland revealed that Bolingbroke had returned from exile and had landed at Ravenspurgh.

The back wall projection showed a white hart as the queen entered with Bushy and Bagot (2.2). The queen’s premonitions captured well the sense of impending disaster. Bushy and Bagot had brought with them a set of perspective pictures and a cylindrical mirror viewer, all of which had probably recently been looted from Gaunt’s house.

After trying to conceal the objects behind their backs, they found an immediate use for them. They showed her a series of images reflected in the viewer, hastily skipping over one, possibly because of its racy content, as they explained that her grief was similar to an optical illusion.

Green arrived with news of Bolingbroke’s landing, which confirmed the queen in her dark forebodings.

York was still ill-tempered, complaining that “nothing lives but crosses, cares and grief”. He became the dismal embodiment of the grief of which the queen had spoken.

The death of the Duchess of Gloucester brought more gloom with York ruminating “How shall we do for money for these wars?” As he continued with his preparations for Richard’s Irish war, he turned to Bushy, Bagot and Green and asked “Gentlemen, will you go muster men?” They shrugged their shoulders and looked clueless in response, producing more despondency in York as he walked off in his habitual grump. His grumble that “everything is left at six and seven” as he disappeared off the walkway, tinged his departure with comedy.

The favourites were left alone. Realising that the tide of events was turning against them, Green and Bushy decided to seek refuge in Bristol while Bagot left for Ireland.

Brambles were projected at the back as Bolingbroke, now returned to England, and Northumberland made their way along the road (2.3). Percy (Edmund Wiseman) soon caught up with them and was introduced to Bolingbroke.

At this stage, Bolingbroke looked like a reasonable successor to Richard. He had personal warmth and his greetings and conversation seemed sincere. This contrasted with the deliberately chilly characterisation Tennant gave to the incumbent monarch. But this did not prevent Bolingbroke being very abrupt with Berkeley when he omitted to address him as “Lancaster”.

Despite his contrite kneeling posture, Bolingbroke incurred the full force of York’s wrath for returning from exile. The fury was all the more effective for emanating from one of the frailest characters in the production.

But York could not maintain that level of animosity for long. After his initial outburst, York wilted and faded as he realised that he could not resist Bolingbroke’s onward march. He said “Unless you please…” and after a considerable pause continued “… to enter in the castle…” wafting his hand at waist height as if positively encouraging them to accompany him.

He appeared tempted by the opportunity to join Bolingbroke in Bristol to see Bushy and Bagot dealt with. But he reverted to his customary despondency when saying that “Things past redress are now with me past care”.

The moon was projected on to the back wall to provide a backdrop for the brief scene in which the Welsh Captain (Joshua Richards) informed Salisbury (Simon Thorp again) that his forces were departing, referencing how “the pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth” as one of many portents that the king was dead (2.4).

Bushy and Green were dragged out of a large upstage trap (3.1). Bolingbroke castigated them for living off his rightful inheritance while he had enjoyed nothing but “the bitter bread of banishment”. Bushy and Green were led away to execution.

Their severed heads were quickly delivered back to Bolingbroke, who brandished them joyously, one in each hand, as he announced “A while to work, and after holiday”. The equation of revenge murder with holidaying provided a stark reminder of Bolingbroke’s callousness.

Richard took off his shoes to run barefoot on the ground when he returned from Ireland (3.2). The seaside location was indicated by a brief crash of waves and squawk of seagulls.

In a grand, self-dramatising gesture, he lay on the ground to caress and talk with the “Dear earth” like a long-lost friend, calling on the soil to bring forth obstacles to Bolingbroke’s advance. Once this conversation was finished, his “mock not” indicated his sudden awareness that the others were taking note of his eccentricity.

He was told how Bolingbroke had taken advantage of his absence to return from exile. Richard compared himself to the rising sun and assured Carlisle and Aumerle that he had many a “glorious angel” fighting on his side. The scariest aspect of this speech was that he actually seemed to believe what he was saying. The staging of a key subsequent scene would refer back to this description.

Salisbury announced that the Welsh forces had departed. Richard suddenly realised that he was 20,000 men down.

He panicked and clutched at Aumerle, who clutched him reassuringly back, enabling Richard to compose himself sufficiently to announce “Am I not king?”

Revolt

His revival was short-lived. Scroop (Keith Osborn) brought news of a general revolt, at which point Richard started to spit in anger at the Judases that had betrayed him.

But when he learnt that Bushy and Bagot had been executed, he fell on all fours in shock. Still reeling from hearing of their deaths, he crawled across to the centre of the stage to speak “of graves, of worms and epitaphs”.

Richard crouched and saying “let us sit upon the ground” ordered his followers to do likewise. Once they had complied and sat observing him at a distance, he began to speak like a disturbed child about the “sad stories of the death of kings”.

A key point came when he referred to how Death allowed kings “a little scene, to monarchize”. He stretched out his arms to his companions needily expressing how he might “want friends”.

He rolled the crown away from him, but it was gathered and placed back on his head by the Bishop (Jim Hooper) who, together with Aumerle, helped Richard to his feet. Their support made him snap out of his mood with a grateful “Thou chid’st me well”.

He grabbed Aumerle’s sword and wielded it promising to “change blows” with Bolingbroke. But his confidence did not last long. He exploded at Aumerle, slapping his friend’s sides, when news came of York’s defection to Bolingbroke. He exited despondently on a journey to Flint Castle or as he figuratively expressed it “from Richard’s night to Bolingbroke’s fair day”.

Bolingbroke and his followers gathered outside Flint Castle (3.3). He sent Northumberland to talk to Richard.

A spectacular sight interrupted Bolingbroke’s preparations to confront the king.

The gantry descended partway carrying the resplendent figure of Richard in his regal robe, with crown, sceptre and orb in his hands, accompanied by Aumerle who was turned to face him. The king glowed like the bright sun of his rhetorical imaginings in 3.2. In the stage right gallery were some of his followers, hands held together in prayer, facing towards him in adoration, while in the opposite gallery the choir sang as if in his praise.

Richard imperiously demanded to know why Bolingbroke had returned, and threatened nigh-on divine retribution against him.

The staging of this moment showed us Richard as he imagined himself. But Bolingbroke and York also commented on this grand vision. The staging thus converted both Richard’s imagined version of himself, as well as Bolingbroke and York’s interpretation of his presence, into a majestic stage reality. The fact that the staging had given us a fanciful vision of Richard’s self image spoke of his detachment and self-absorption.

Northumberland, now lit, faced the audience as he addressed Richard who was above and behind him on the gantry. Despite Richard’s powerful entry, he conceded to Northumberland’s request to talk with Bolingbroke. His reply was in fact spoken by Aumerle who repeated what Richard silently mouthed in his ear.

After Northumberland had left, Richard took off his glittering royal outer garment in a moment that marked the restoration of reality after his almost supernatural entrance, and turned to Aumerle. Richard asked him if he had made a mistake and should call back Northumberland to send Bolingbroke defiance.

Aumerle noticed and remarked on Northumberland’s return, at which point Richard asked him whether he should resign. For all the solemnity of his thought, he was still very skittish and playful in his delivery of “A little, little grave, an obscure grave”, with the second phrase rushing out and overriding the conclusion of the first.

This terrible prospect caused Aumerle to weep silently, hiding his face from Richard lest he see his shameful tears.

At 3.3.171 he chided Aumerle “you mock at me” (Folio version, not “laugh”). He then kissed Aumerle on the lips and went to put the crown on his head, an offer Aumerle shunned. This gesture, obviously not indicated in any stage direction, established Aumerle as Richard’s main favourite, side-lining the others and preparing the way for the betrayal in the production’s rewritten ending. It was important to position Aumerle as the principal favourite so that his betrayal had bite.

Richard turned to Northumberland and enquired what Bolingbroke wanted. The king was bitterly sarcastic about the request to descend into the base court. This mood continued when he actually met Bolingbroke. As the usurper and his followers knelt before Richard, the king pointed at the crown on his head mocking Bolingbroke for having an ambition aimed “Thus high at least”.

It was decided that Richard should depart for London, at which point the interval came. As the stage emptied, Aumerle cuffed York, highlighting the tension between them.

The second half began with the Queen accompanied by her two ladies in the garden (3.4). They responded to her questions about how they might occupy themselves as if humouring her. This subtly suggested the Queen’s fragile state of mind, which her ladies were taking great care not to aggravate.

They all hid from the Gardener (Joshua Richards again) and his Man (Elliot Barnes-Worrell) behind the poles that supported the bead curtain screens. The Gardener gave a cane to his young assistant to use as “supportance to the bending twigs”. Both had rustic accents.

After they had talked of Richard’s impending deposition, the Queen rushed forward. Recognising her, they knelt. Having ascertained the facts, the Queen decided to set off for London.

The audience tittered at Gage-o-geddon ™ (4.1). Bolingbroke encouraged Bagot to speak freely, so he accused Aumerle of being behind the death of Gloucester. Recrimination and accusations of lying flew about, as did the gages, the number of which risked tipping the scene into comedy.

There was something funny about the overly dramatic way that the gauntlets were thrown to the ground. The fact that Aumerle ran out of gloves and had to borrow one with which to challenge the reported testimony of the banished Mowbray did not help matters.

However, mourning over the death of Mowbray in exile helped to restore an air of seriousness.

York informed them that Richard was prepared to resign. He was accompanied by a servant bearing the crown and warder on a cushion. The throne was already in position behind them, which Bolingbroke was invited to ascend and which he indicated he would occupy.

The Bishop of Carlisle castigated Bolingbroke’s ambition and was promptly arrested.

Henry sat on the throne with the attendant bearing the crown and sceptre on his immediate left. Richard entered in a long white robe, his long plait undone. Being confronted with Henry’s semi-regal presence prompted Richard to ask “why am I sent for to a king…?”

He was very David Tennant when remarking about the courtiers around him saying “Were they not mine?” with a quizzical high pitch to his voice.

He stood downstage and faced the audience to intone “God Save the King!”, surprised that no one else joined in.

Richard asked for the crown, which was brought to him on the cushion. He took the crown and faced the audience, then held the crown with his outstretched right hand before bidding Bolingbroke take it from him. His second “Here, cousin” was spoken tauntingly as if he was saying “Here, kitty” to a cat.

This was a brilliant tactical move. Bolingbroke, ensconced comfortably on the throne was now obliged to rise from it and effectively beg for this ultimate symbol of royal authority, while simultaneously quitting his secure tenure on the relatively minor regal symbol of the throne. To get what he really wanted he was forced to make a demeaning, unregal display of his desire.

Doubt and hesitation played across his face. But then Bolingbroke advanced, stretched out his hand to grasp the crown on the other side. After a brief moment in which Richard described how they both held it either side, he deftly inverted it to begin his analogy about buckets in a well, the upside down crown serving as the mouth of the well.

Richard was determined to remain symbolically in power for as long as possible. In effect, all he had at this point were the symbolic trappings of authority, as actual power had long ago transferred to Bolingbroke. But as Bolingbroke had first taken hold of this symbol of royal power, Richard had symbolically reasserted his control over it by changing its position and giving it a new analogical meaning.

Games like this were all that Richard had left. Fate now only allowed him to play “a little scene, to monarchize” as he had indicated earlier.

This led into the debate about which of them had the most cares. Bolingbroke brought this game to an end with a simple question: “Are you contented to resign the crown?”

Richard relaxed his grip letting the crown move towards Bolingbroke as he said “Ay”, but then snatched it away towards him saying “no”, paused to repeat “No”, before conceding defeat by saying “ay” and letting the crown dangle limply in his outstretched hand.

Richard drew close and stared at him intently, holding the crown close but firmly within his own grasp, demanding that Bolingbroke and all those present, “mark me how I will undo myself”.

Regal

He placed the crown on his head, sat on the throne with the sceptre in his hand and went through his long, at times incantatory, list of renouncements. This was his last regal act. Soon reluctant was Richard to let go of his kingship that he last act as monarch was effectively to devise his own elaborate resignation ceremony and to perform it with all due officiousness.

Rising from the throne he approached Bolingbroke, put the sceptre in his hand, and saying “God save King Henry” placed the crown on Bolingbroke’s head before bending to kiss his feet.

Surprised at this rhetorical ceremony of Richard’s own devising and at Richard’s fawning obeisance, Bolingbroke took a few embarrassed steps back as if retreating from the attentions of a deranged but harmless individual.

Richard then asked “What more remains?” at which Northumberland showed him the list of crimes to which he had to confess. Richard testily pointed out that Northumberland’s crimes included the “deposing of a king”, but Northumberland irritatedly restated the demand.

Richard denounced Northumberland as “thou haught insulting man” and also spat out his desire to be “a mockery king of snow”. The stark contrast in the portrayal of Richard and Bolingbroke showed how Richard was living in a fantasy world of principle and symbol.

Richard asked for a mirror. But Northumberland’s repeated insistence that Richard read the paper became so heated that the situation seemed on the verge of erupting into violence, prompting Bolingbroke to caution Northumberland “Urge it no more”.

When the small circular hand mirror arrived, Richard looked into it and pulled on his face, examining its lines. He dropped the mirror to demonstrate the fragility of the image it reflected “As brittle as the glory is the face”, just as casually as he had earlier dropped his warder. The small hand mirror visibly cracked but did not shatter loudly. Richard crouched and leant over it, at which point he resembled Narcissus gazing at his reflection in the water.

Bolingbroke comforted Richard by saying that “the shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed the shadow of your face”. This remark produced sycophantic laughter from Bolingbroke’s followers. But they had only registered that their master had scored a point in an argument and had not fully appreciated the imagery. Their unthinking laughter highlighted how Bolingbroke and Richard, despite their enmity, shared a poetic temperament that set them apart from the others.

Richard really loved Bolingbroke’s reference to him as “fair cousin”, and remarked what a grand change it was to have a king as a flatterer.

Richard was conveyed away and Bolingbroke’s coronation was arranged. In a final parting gesture, Bolingbroke deliberately stamped his heel into the broken mirror as he walked over it.

The anti-Bolingbroke conspirators were left behind to confer over their plot.

The Queen and her ladies made their way through the London streets as random citizens ran amok making gibbering noises (5.1). Richard was brought in handcuffed and collapsed at her feet. He was pelted by the populace with one measly bit of mud.

The couple crouched on the ground as Richard urged her to flee to France. A crowd of Londoners carrying torches gathered to watch them. They buffeted their way forward but were restrained by the queen’s ladies and the guards.

At 5.1.34 “Which art a lion and the king of beasts” was met by a “rawww” from the crowd, which prompted Richard to turn on them directing “A king of beasts, indeed!” at them.

Northumberland appeared in the middle gallery. The crowd laughed when they heard that Richard was to be taken to Pomfret. He said to the Queen “With all swift speed you must away to France” and the crowd mockingly cheered her imminent departure.

Richard was bitterly sarcastic to Northumberland, saying that Bolingbroke would come to mistrust him.

The crowd jeered when the couple kissed, and laughed when the queen suggested “Banish us both” as a compromise.

The agony Richard felt when separated from the queen looked genuine. She was only person to whom Richard was persistently affectionate. The genuine nature of his love for Isabel perhaps helped to blunt the edge of the unlikeable characterisation of Richard so carefully established over the rest of the performance. Richard and Isabel kissed and parted.

As the London crowd dispersed, they revealed behind them the solitary figure of York sitting on a bench (5.2).

He was joined by the vivacious Duchess of York (Marty Cruickshank), who told her husband the story of Bolingbroke’s progress through London. The audience laughed at the theatre in-joke about the “well-graced actor” being followed by one whose “prattle” was tedious.

Aumerle appeared, quickly stuffing his plot bond into his top before making indifferent replies to his parents’ questions.

Inquisitive York snatched the paper from him and was angered by its contents, calling for his horse to be saddled and for his boots. The Duchess was concerned for her son’s fate and York’s repeated misogynist put-downs were stressed as part of the scene’s fun.

The Duchess realised that Aumerle’s life was at stake, so she swiped her husband’s boots and threw them offstage to delay his departure. Once York had set off to warn Bolingbroke, she sent Aumerle after him and prepared to depart herself.

The following court scene began with a joking reference to the unseen Prince Hal and his London high jinks, which made a nice in-joke for the fans of the tetralogy (5.3). Aumerle ascended the steps from the large trap to speak with King Henry. They were left alone to ensure their privacy and Aumerle locked the door at the bottom of the trap. York shouted to be admitted from down below and was eventually let in brandishing the incriminating paper. He was very out of breath from the exertion of the ride.

King Henry said that York’s goodness excused his son’s fault, but York went into a loud grump at Henry’s leniency. The Duchess tried to enter the room, prompting King Henry’s “Our scene is altered from a serious thing”. York exclaimed a loud “oh” when he finally recognised his wife’s voice. She was finally let in, and used her riding crop to beat her husband as she contradicted him.

The comedy of the bickering and competitive kneeling was funny, particularly when the Duchess spread her arms wide claiming “Our prayers do outpray his” to which poor York responded by trying to throwing his hands even wider.

The sequence culminated in the Duchess pleading to hear the king’s pardon before she would rise from her knees.

The effect of York’s French reference, with “pardon” meaning “sorry but no”, was lost in the phrase’s delivery, but the lurch into French was nonetheless vaguely comic.

Henry agreed to pardon Aumerle, and was reassuringly blunt about it. But his decision to pursue and punish the other conspirators showed that he was not purely merciful.

Henry pointedly told Aumerle, drawing him aside before he left, “Your mother well have prayed, and prove you true”. This looked like a warning: a shot across Aumerle’s bows constituting a considerable incentive to him to do something to prove his loyalty to Henry. The Duchess also admonished her son, pointing at him with her riding crop saying “I pray God make thee new”.

Scene 5.4 was entirely cut for reasons which would soon become obvious.

A massive section of the stage tilted up to reveal a large deep recess beneath. On reflection this transformation of the stage, with the RSC showing off the full capabilities of their new theatre, began to look like spectacle for the sake of it. Was this the RST or was it Tracy Island? Impossible to tell. The deployment of the full toy box of effects contrasted with the simplicity of the very effective and uncomplicated staging of the play by Shakespeare At The Tobacco Factory.

Gradually as the glassy underside of the panel came to rest, the figure of Richard became dimly visible in its reflection as he began to speak (5.5). At first it seemed that Richard was the other side of a translucent panel chained to a sloping surface just behind it, but the clanking of the chains by which he was held prisoner determined his precise location as in the recess, with the shiny panel showing a dim reflection of his recumbent form.

It was somehow disappointing that the beginning of Richard’s most eloquent and quiet speech, the one in which as a helpless and humbled prisoner he shows his frailty and begins to win us over with his humility, the most verbal and personal passage in the play, was heralded by an attention-seeking demonstration by the set, which continued, literally and metaphorically, to overshadow the focus of our interest.

The set design trumped the language, where the staging should have achieved the opposite. The chains were at times very noisy and risked drowning out individual words, particularly when Richard finally rose to a standing position and we could see him clearly in the dungeon recess.

In keeping with the lack of respect for the words, some very touching parts of the speech such as the specific content of his “thoughts divine” and “scruples” were cut, by skipping straight from “For no thought is contented” to “Thus play I…” But his flipping between wishing himself a beggar and then a king was kept. Music was played which jarred with him.

Also cut was the reference to the “numb’ring clock” with its analogy between the face, body and timepiece. This sequence was an essential expression of the effects of imprisonment on his state of mind and as such was integral to the depiction of Richard at this moment. Cutting the phrase on the grounds that the audience would not ‘get it’, ignored the key point that this opacity deliberately points to his distracted condition. The excision therefore had the effect of making Richard appear relatively mentally composed.

Filleting a scene of its more obscure parts displays a lack of trust in either the audience’s knowledge or its inquisitiveness and sense of wonder. Any production that cares about the language of this play should leave this marvellous scene intact.

Visit

The Groom (Elliot Barnes-Worrell again) came to visit and spoke to Richard about his favourite horse. His use of the word “erned” was emended to “yearned”.

The Keeper (Joshua Richards again) brought Richard food and unchained him so that he could eat it, but would not taste it as he usually did. The reference to Exton was changed so that 5.5.100 read “Sir Piers of Exton, who There lately came one from the King, commands the contrary”.

Suspecting a plot, Richard attacked the Keeper and the other murderers burst in. Richard did very well to attack and kill them. The last one stabbed Richard in the back, but with his dying energy Richard ripped off his killer’s balaclava. It was Aumerle. Gasps echoed out from the audience.

Richard’s mention of “Exton” at 5.5.109 was obviously cut following Pope’s emendation, which had the effect not only of facilitating the changed ending, but of making the line metrical. He gazed at his friend and stressed quizzically “thy fierce hand” so that the phrase became another “Et tu, Brute?”

The ending had been changed to create a moment of almost Victorian melodrama, possibly very confusing for any of the schoolchildren viewing the special schools’ broadcast of the recording, who presumably would need to be informed that the ending was not the one that Shakespeare actually wrote.

Taking the changed ending on its own terms raises the question whether Aumerle killed Richard to prove his loyalty to Henry after his narrow escape from death at the new monarch’s hands following the uncovering of his role in the plot against the king.

The only problem with the staging of Richard’s death was that as he collapsed dead, he disappeared out of sight into the dungeon recess.

Exton’s lines were given to Aumerle and the transferred words served well at expressing Aumerle’s very particular regret at his actions.

King Henry was flown in on the gantry with his orb and sceptre, making a regal appearance before receiving news of rebel captures (5.6). York stood in attendance, now walking with the aid of a stick, marking his enfeeblement.

Aumerle dragged in an open coffin containing Richard’s dead body. Henry made a big display of descending from the gantry in order to castigate him, with his references to Exton changed to Aumerle.

Northumberland and the other nobles backed away from Henry when they realised that Richard had been murdered, apparently on Henry’s instructions. Richard tried to assuage the departing men with “Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe”.

Henry and York stooped over the coffin to gaze at Richard’s body. Henry then looked out to the audience and vowed “to make a voyage to the Holy Land / To wash this blood from off my guilty hand”, holding his hand out as if disgusted by imagining it stained with Richard’s blood.

Richard then appeared in spotlight and walked onto the gantry to look down at the scene of Henry’s appalled expression and outstretched hand, with York still knelt in sadness over the coffin. The lights extinguished.

This final image of Henry vowing to undertake a journey that he would never make overlooked by Richard, could be seen as a foreshadowing of his death. The only Jerusalem that Henry would reach would be the Jerusalem Chamber in which he died. And the Jerusalem Chamber, built by Richard II, has a roof decorated with his emblem. So that when Henry looked upwards dying he would have seen an emblematic reminder of Richard. This staging with Henry looking aghast, thinking about ‘Jerusalem’ with Richard physically above him looking down seemed to echo the circumstances of Henry’s death.

Conclusions

Tennant’s Richard was a stunning combination of the extremely feminised and the uncompromisingly dislikeable, while also providing a fascinatingly textured characterisation.

While this production was intricately detailed, it suffered in comparison with the Tobacco Factory version, which being a small dark room with no set tends to strip plays to their linguistic core and delivers that core of language at close quarters.

By contrast, the huge RST auditorium lacked studio theatre intimacy and sometimes the elaborate staging shifted focus from the poetic meat of the language. The ‘Tracy Island’ prison sequence encapsulated this striving for visual effect while simultaneously not trusting the full text.

The melodramatic rewrite of the ending meant that the production strayed into adaptation territory.

Arrest Rylance

Much Ado About Nothing, Old Vic, 28 September 2013

This production was dreadful. So bad that at points I had to close my eyes because I could not bear to look at it. At the end I did not applaud because I was so stunned at its ineptitude. Leaving the Old Vic, I expected to see blue police tape cordoning it off so that the crime I had just witnessed could be investigated.

It really did look as if the director Mark Rylance had completely abandoned the project and the cast had been left to cobble together something themselves.

Though I had to admire James Earl Jones for puffing his way through his lines like The Little Engine That Could, Vanessa Redgrave recited her part with the casual neglect of someone who had already been paid and whose mind was definitely elsewhere.

By writing this much I have already devoted more thought to the production than evidently went into its making. Enough.

The Sound of Drums

1/2/3 Henry VI, The Globe, 25 August 2013

Harry The Sixth

The set arrived late from Barnet, where the productions had been live streamed the previous day. Early groundling arrivers could therefore hear the sound of power tools bolting together the aluminium frames of the two towers that stood either side of a tall-backed throne.

The cold and rain of the previous day-long performance meant that several of the cast were quite hoarse during this day’s three-play marathon.

Drums were placed on stage and were played by the fourteen members of the cast. This modestly sized company resulted in much doubling.

Henry V’s black coffin was carried through the yard by pall bearers as Mary Doherty sang to the beat of funereal drums (1.1). Graham Butler’s Henry VI, dressed in a long blue gown, led the procession onstage. He was escorted to the throne by Protector Gloucester.

And there he sat until he spoke his first words in act three. He spent much of the intervening period reading the Temple Shakespeare edition of Hamlet, a play about a young man who shies away from decisive action. This suggested a connection between the ineffectual young king and Shakespeare’s tragic hero. It also created the intriguing possibility that Henry identified with, or was inspired by, the Danish prince.

Gloucester (Garry Cooper), with his grizzled weather-beaten face, world-weary demeanour, and staff of office, bickered with gruff, bearded Exeter (Nigel Hastings) and the Bishop of Winchester (Mike Grady). Henry, with his fresh, clean-shaved face sat and read. This contrast emphasised that the state was in the hands of grown men who completely overshadowed a youthful king. Gloucester invocated the ghost of Henry V, considering the dead king to be more potent than his living son.

Mary Doherty appeared as a female messenger. Her frequent presence, sometimes in male roles, prepared us for her subsequent appearance as the key character of Margaret. This also created a parallel: just as Henry was present while supposedly absent, so was Margaret. The messenger brought news of losses in France, resulting in Exeter taking 10,000 soldiers to quell the rebellion.

There was a particularly tender moment as Gloucester held Henry’s cheek with great affection, saying that he would proclaim him king.

Over in France, Charles (Simon Harrison) climbed down from one of the towers as the French tried to raise the siege of Orleans (1.2). Contrasted with the English, he was a faintly ridiculous figure who always seemed out of his depth.

The lid of Henry V’s coffin was opened and swords were taken from it. The French faced the audience and engaged in a slow motion sword battle. Their attack was repelled by the English to the accompaniment of yet more drums. The coffin was moved and set up as a wall. The English also took swords from the coffin as they prepared to fight.

The Bastard of Orleans (Joe Jameson) was characterised as a posh boy. He told of Joan La Pucelle who was going to raise the siege and drive out the English. Beatriz Romilly played Joan in a Hull accent, which neatly underscored her lowly origins compared to the French nobles. Interestingly, she was virtually the only French character who was not at any point played for laughs. Beatriz Romilly, as her name suggests, had a vaguely Mediterranean look that could pass for French.

Joan was handed a sword by Mary Doherty, another moment that heralded her future warrior role. Joan fought and beat Charles, who comically threw himself at her feet. Joan passionately ordered the French to fight the English.

The stage left tower represented the Tower of London, which Gloucester tried to enter but was kept out by order of the Bishop, who stood inside the tower (1.3). More swords were fetched from the coffin and used to strike the metal structure. Mary Doherty appeared on the stage right tower as the Officer who ordered the rioters home.

Gloucester climbed the structure and confronted the Bishop face to face. At this point, as his uncles became embroiled in a loud dispute, Henry sat up and scrutinised them with the distressed expression of a child watching his parents argue.

A sequence of battles took place in France. Shirtless Talbot (Andrew Sheridan) washed his face before dressing to fight alongside Salisbury (Roger Evans), who was killed by an arrow carried slowly through the air by Mary Doherty (1.4). Henry looked up from his book to watch. Mary Doherty appeared again as a messenger bringing news of the onward march of Joan’s army. Henry sang as Talbot vowed to fight.

The French advanced and Talbot deftly ducked between them before swinging his sword to send the French flying (1.5). But he lost his fight against Joan. She posed confidently in a wide, forward-leaning posture, bouncing her hips in supple preparation, before finally overcoming the Englishman. She shouted at him in victory and kicked Talbot down the steps into the yard.

After the siege of Orleans had been raised, Charles dotingly offered to marry Joan (1.6). But victory was short-lived as Talbot and Burgundy (Nigel Hastings) climbed the towers to retake the city (2.1). Charles’ affection now turned to anger at Joan for the French defeat, which she in turn blamed on the watch.

Burgundy and Talbot stood on the towers, as Salisbury’s coffin was brought in bedecked with flowers (2.2).

Scene 2.3 was cut, the action continuing with the Temple Garden meeting between the rival factions who disputed whether Richard (Brendan O’Hea) should be restored to his status as Duke of York (2.4). The red and white flowers that became emblems of the rival houses were plucked from Salisbury’s coffin. Mary Doherty played Vernon, who backed Richard Plantagenet.

Richard visited Mortimer (Nigel Hastings) in jail (2.5). The shabby grey-hooded prisoner explained how Richard was entitled to claim the crown. This lengthy monologue was rendered as an extremely well textured piece of exposition, whose pace and emphasis added interest to what could have been a dry historical essay.

Mortimer died and Richard stroked the back of his head, cupping it as he laid him out on the coffin. Mary Doherty appeared again to escort the dead Mortimer away as she sung a funeral theme.

The coffin then became Mortimer’s coffin, which was carried off (3.1).

Hinting at his imminent insertion into the play, Henry donned his crown to watch the dispute between Winchester and Gloucester. He fiddled nervously with his fingers before exploding “O, what a scandal…” in a child-like tantrum.

This outburst could be seen as the release of all the pent-up frustration that had been brewing within him through his entire onstage presence since the start of the performance.

He ordered the brawlers to resolve their dispute, but did so ineffectually, eventually asking his uncle Gloucester to sort matters out. His first action within the play was characterised by immaturity.

This lack of maturity could be seen again when Henry hid in the corner with his head in his hands and howled before expressing his anger that his uncle Beaufort would not make peace.

When a truce was agreed, Henry skipped up and down with joy and returned to his throne and his book.

Henry was also boyishly keen when granting Richard’s petition and restoring him as Duke of York, clumsily placing a sword and scabbard over his neck before bidding him rise.

Gloucester advised Henry to travel to France to be crowned, which Henry gleefully accepted purely on the strength of his uncle’s recommendation. He spoke the phrase “Friendly counsel cuts off many foes” as if it were a motto he had learned. His grasp of statecraft was merely a collection of aphorisms.

The town of Rouen was fought over (3.2). Joan and her troops sneaked in disguised as peasants and vaunted their victory by ascending the tall towers. Talbot and Burgundy climbed the sides of the throne and swore to retake the town. The return match consisted of the English striking the metal framework of the towers with their swords until the French fell out and the English re-ascended.

Joan rallied the French and then enticed Burgundy to join them (3.3). He posed haughtily on the tower but was then won over almost comically. Joan sat on the ground facing the audience and spoke emotionally about the “pining malady of France”. She rose and told Burgundy about his enemy, the Duke of Orleans, being released.

His interest aroused, Burgundy descended to the stage. Joan, backed by the other French, reached out her hand calling on him to “Come, come, return”. With a simple “I am vanquished” Burgundy relented. The implicit comedy of this moment soon became the explicit comedy of Joan remarking that this change of allegiance was “Done like a Frenchman: turn, and turn again!”

Henry was led off the throne by Mary Doherty at which point the interval came.

The coronation of Henry VI in his ermine was interrupted by news of Burgundy’s defection to the French (4.1). Henry reacted still very much like a child as he expressed his disappointment that “uncle Burgundy” had turned against him. He fiddled with his fingers and encouraged Talbot to talk Burgundy round.

Henry sought to diffuse the rose dispute by making York and Somerset (David Hartley) sit by his side. York was appointed regent and Somerset was obliged to join forces with him. In this Henry was hopelessly optimistic.

Crucially for subsequent developments, Exeter noticed that York was angrier than he had let on.

Scene 4.2 was cut, so that the performance continued with the scenes showing the build-up of tension between York and Somerset. With Henry back on his throne, York became annoyed that Somerset not supplied him with troops (4.3). Somerset’s faction blamed York for the disappearance of Talbot in battle (4.4).

As their enemies drew closer, Talbot urged his son (Joe Jameson) to flee, grabbing him by the neck (4.5). But son John thought this dishonourable and argued back until the pair were wrestling on the ground. Mary Doherty placed a sword belt around John’s neck and Talbot left him to fight on.

The battle sequence in scene 4.6 was cut. Mary Doherty simply escorted John away to indicate his death and turned Talbot round to begin his impassioned speech about the death of his son (4.7).

His tearful invocation of “My Icarus, my blossom” was very moving and gained by not following a distracting battle sequence. Mary Doherty led John onstage by the hand and laid him by Talbot’s knees as he crouched and caressed him. The whole cast sang as Talbot reclined to rest the back of his head on his son’s chest before expiring himself.

Henry came forward and took both of them by the hand. They rose and exited at opposite sides of the stage. The remainder of the scene showing the victorious French was cut.

This left Henry ready for his meeting in Parliament (5.1). The fact that he had been dramatically present at the deaths of Talbot and his son, underscored his acceptance of the pope’s request for peace with France. To seal the deal, the Earl of Armagnac’s daughter was offered in marriage.

Henry was very nervous about the prospect of a “wanton dalliance with a paramour”, but consented if this benefited the country.

Winchester was now a cardinal. Henry gave the Ambassador a jewel to give to his fiancée. The scene ended on a sour note as the newly appointed Cardinal twisted the female Legate’s wrist as he ordered money to be given to the pope as recompense for making him Cardinal.

Charles received news of the Paris revolt, and then a messenger told of the English advance. Joan encouraged Charles to give battle (5.2).

Joan was defeated at Angiers (5.3). She made a circle with her sword and lay on her back in the middle to call on her spirit helpers. They appeared to her but were invisible to us. She sat up and reached out her hand with a hopeful expression, but they would not assist her. She pleaded with the invisible presence, her face expressing her despair as they abandoned her. She sat and sobbed realising that France was lost to the English.

This childlike vulnerability and disappointment briefly made her analogous with the king.

York found and fought with her. Despite her fieriness and determined shriek, he overcame and disarmed her. After an exchange of bitter words he dragged her away by the collar.

Suffolk (Roger Evans) took Margaret prisoner and took an immediate fancy to her. He initially blocked her exit, let her go, but called her back, creating a moment of comedy as he debated with himself whether or not to pursue her amorously. He wanted to make her queen to forge a peace, but also wanted her for himself. Hence his brief slip when he told Margaret he wanted her for “my… his love”.

Margaret’s father, Regnier (Patrick Myles), spoke from the tower before descending to approve the match, provided that his control over his territories was not challenged. When this was agreed he gave Margaret a comical thumbs up. Suffolk stole a kiss from her, which she found outrageously forward.

Prisoner Joan was sent to execution with her arms tied in ropes (5.4). Her father (Garry Cooper) appeared in the yard and she denied being his daughter, after which he rejected her. She shouted condemnation of the lusty and viceful, proclaimed herself a virgin, but then muddied the waters by claiming to be with child in order to escape execution. She strained at the rope that bound her as she cursed York, but was dragged away.

York complained about the “effeminate peace”, when told of it by Cardinal Winchester. The French arrived to formalise the truce. Charles had to acknowledge Henry as his king and serve as viceroy, a proposal he initially rejected until talked round by the other French.

Henry became excited at the description relayed to him of Margaret (5.5). But Gloucester was annoyed that this new arrangement meant breaking his previous troth. The parties argued about Margaret’s relatively low status, with Suffolk quite happy to promote a love match with Margaret. The giddily happy Henry welcomed Suffolk’s self-interested support.

On the other hand, Henry’s calm and assured repudiation of Gloucester’s advice marked the point at which he began to display a modicum of adult independence.

Suffolk was left alone to ascend the throne and tell the audience that had “prevailed” as he ominously promised to “rule both her, the king and realm.”



The Houses of York and Lancaster

The second part of the trilogy began with Gloucester leading Henry to the throne (1.1). After much reverential bowing, Suffolk presented Margaret (Mary Doherty). Henry rushed down to talk to her. He paused before snatching a kiss, pecking at her like a young boy, in another demonstration of his immaturity.

He crowned Margaret as his queen and both sat on the throne.

Gloucester was so unhappy at the peace treaty that he dropped the relevant paper rather than read that Anjou and Maine had been given back to the French and that Margaret had come without a dowry. A sour look of discontent also characterised York’s reaction to no longer being regent in France, a fact that Gloucester spoke about in annoyance, with Warwick (Andrew Sheridan) chiming in as the erstwhile conqueror of those territories.

A general air of dissension arose with Gloucester annoyed at Suffolk, the Cardinal contrarily happy with the king’s choices and fomenting a plot to unseat Gloucester, but with Somerset and Buckingham wary of him.

York was left alone to explain how Normandy was at risk before stating his own intention to claim the crown, as he waited for the right moment to end Henry’s “bookish rule”.

Beatriz Romilly seemed initially miscast as the Duchess of Gloucester, looking excessively young in comparison with her elderly husband (1.2). On the other hand, her youth suited the Duchess’s ambition for her husband to become king, thereby making her queen. And Gloucester’s age fitted his conservative desire for stability as he rejected his wife’s pretences.

His angry reaction on hearing about the Duchess’s dream of being queen provoked a very scornful and bitter riposte from her. Once again, the age difference between the actors underscored their incompatible temperaments.

A creepy, black-cloaked Hume (Simon Harrison) told her that spirit conjurers would assist her project.

Petitioners were expecting Gloucester but instead found Suffolk and Margaret. She received their petitions and sent them packing with a waft of her fan (1.3). She resolved that Gloucester had to be removed as he was treating her as a mere subject. She had by now also realised that Henry was “bent to holiness”.

Suffolk responded to her jealousy of Eleanor by promising to deal with the Duchess. An intense power vacuum had been created that all were trying to fill.

The dispute between Somerset and York was brought to Henry’s attention, but he could only scream at them. Margaret sat on the throne, while Henry climbed up into a tower and watched proceedings from aloft, thus emphasising her more commanding attitude.

From her position of authority, Margaret challenged Gloucester’s protectorship, to which Gloucester responded by thumping his staff on the ground and leaving. Margaret dropped her fan and asked Eleanor to pick it up, called her “minion” and thwacked her in the face.

Henry joined his queen on the throne and the case of alleged treachery was brought before them. The traitor was accused of claiming that York was the rightful king. Henry rushed at the accused and asked if this were true. York also joined in, threatening to punch the man. Gloucester resolved the issue by arranging a trial by combat.

Hume and his conjurors laid a man playing Mother Jourdain on the ground (1.4). Eleanor watched as a sand circle was spread round Mother Jourdain and she was covered with a royal standard. The apparition, portrayed by an older man, rose up and answered Eleanor’s questions. Proceedings were brought to an end when York and Buckingham, who had been watching from the tower, swooped to arrest them.

A comic note was struck as Henry and Margaret were accompanied by falconers who held out their arms as if bearing invisible birds and made squawking noises (2.1). Buckingham told Henry of Eleanor’s arrest and Gloucester disowned her. The ever loyal Henry gave Gloucester a reassuring look. The sequence with Simpcox was cut.

York outlined his claim to the crown at length to Warwick and Salisbury (2.2). It was hard not to laugh when Warwick concluded after this long speech “What plain proceeding is more plain than this?” The pair gave their support to York.

The king and queen sat on the throne for the trial of Eleanor, who prostrated herself before them (2.3). Henry looked unhappy at her actions, but held Eleanor’s hands comfortingly when pronouncing her banishment.

This sequence clearly showed that Henry was not relishing the exercise of power, particularly when he had to take action against the wife of his beloved uncle Humphrey. But he nevertheless insisted that Gloucester resign the protectorship, which he did so by handing over his staff to Henry. The young man looked slightly nervous at having his stabilisers removed, while Margaret appeared pleased at this outcome.

The trial by combat took place. Horner confessed to treason and was killed, and Henry pronounced that the outcome had demonstrated the guilt of the offender, thereby showing his complete trust in the theory of trial by combat.

Gloucester wrapped his cloak around himself to watch his wife’s departure (2.4). She entered wearing a cotton smock and carrying a candle as she pleaded with him to hide her shame. She was angry at her condition and cried when referring to her “shameful yoke”. She warned about Suffolk and others, and became bitter when she realised that her husband Gloucester would be their next victim.

Margaret’s hold over Henry became increasingly apparent (3.1). She told her husband that Gloucester had been insolent towards her. Margaret held Henry’s hand and talked to him like a child.

Suffolk implied that Gloucester had also been involved in sorcery. The Cardinal and York added their twopenneth. Henry responded to this pressure by wringing his hands and proclaiming Gloucester’s innocence.

Somerset brought news of the loss of France. Henry hugged Gloucester when he finally arrived, but Suffolk arrested him, causing Henry to slink away powerless to alter the course of events. Gloucester denied the accusations of treachery and Henry maintained he was innocent. But Gloucester was nevertheless taken prisoner.

Henry exclaimed that his heart was full of grief. He began to accuse Margaret in a hoarse unmanly shriek.

Once Henry had left, Margaret adopted a regal air as she described him to the remaining nobles as “too full of foolish pity”. Suffolk, the Cardinal, York and Margaret placed their hands in a pile and vowed to procure Gloucester’s death.

York and Somerset bickered over the Irish revolt. Margaret sat on the throne, her hands resting confidently at either side, adopting a dominant body posture quite unlike Henry’s previous handwringing. She took command of the crisis and York was dispatched to quell the Irish rebellion.

York realised that he had been sidelined, but took comfort that he now had an army. The nobles had placed “sharp weapons in a madman’s hands”. Jack Cade was going to be set loose to cause trouble, clearing the way for York to assume power in his wake.

Murderers hired by Suffolk informed him that they had done away with Gloucester, just before he was due to be tried (3.2). Henry was already nervous at the prospect of sitting in judgment on his uncle, and Margaret again had to hold his hand to assuage him. Henry’s reaction when Suffolk announced Gloucester’s death was even more extreme: he fainted. Once revived, he screamed in panic and pushed Suffolk to the ground. Henry’s now evident anger was short-lived as he quickly collapsed crying.

Margaret again comforted Henry but cast knowing looks at her fellow conspirators to assure them of her loyalty. Henry’s continued wailing about Gloucester prompted Margaret to complain that he had no concern for her.

Warwick claimed that Suffolk and the Cardinal had killed Gloucester traitorously. Henry became desperate as realised that he was still surrounded by enemies. Gloucester’s body was brought in, covered by a shroud that Warwick lifted to show the signs of murder it bore. Henry gazed in wonder. Margaret sat on the throne and laughed at the idea.

Henry knelt by Gloucester as Warwick and Suffolk continued to argue. Incensed by Warwick’s repeated assertions of his guilt, Suffolk drew his sword in the king’s presence, provoking Henry’s ire at this potentially treasonous act. Salisbury chimed in to say that the commons demanded Suffolk’s death or banishment. Henry promptly banished Suffolk and stood up to Margaret when she pleaded on Suffolk’s behalf. At last there was a faint glimmer of hope that Henry could assert his own authority and command.

Margaret and Suffolk bade their sad farewells. She held his hand and brushed her tears on it, vowing to repeal him or be banished herself. News came that the Cardinal was dying and they enjoyed one final, lingering kiss before they left by separate exits.

The deranged Cardinal mistook Henry for the figure of Death (3.3). He found Gloucester’s dead body, which was still onstage, and this seemed to exacerbate his guilt. He drank poison and collapsed dead.

The interval came just after Suffolk was taken up onto a tower where his head was cut off, and the severed prosthetic left onstage.

Scene 4.1 was cut, so that the second half began with Roger Evans entering for 4.2 as Jack Cade.

He wandered aimlessly before catching sight of Suffolk’s head, which because of the doubling was technically his head. He looked at it dismissively and then glanced at the audience as if wryly commenting that the prosthetic was not a good likeness. This theatrical joke was an excellent way of introducing this most theatrical and subversive of characters.

He sang the production’s Jack Cade song to himself. A groundling heckled that he had just seen him dead. Jack seemed delighted at the transgressive heckle and beamed at the man, telling him to “carry on”. This anarchist wanted the audience to behave badly. Jack was joined in the song by Dick the Butcher (Nigel Hastings) and Smith the Weaver (Gareth Pierce), who were also mentioned in the song and all three got the audience to sing along.

Jack’s repeated claims to the throne were comically undercut by Dick. Drinking small beer was declared a felony and the Clerk of Chatham was denounced as a dangerous intellectual. Sarcastic oohing greeted the news that he had the posh name Emmanuel.

Jack dubbed himself a Knight with a butcher’s cleaver just as haughty Sir Humphrey (Garry Cooper) and Stafford appeared up on the towers to demand the surrender of the rebels. Jack continued to claim the crown, but eventually conceded that he would settle for being protector to Henry. His crew demanded the execution of Lord Say, who could speak French and therefore was a traitor.

The rebels rattled the metal frame of the towers before ascending them, taking Humphrey and Stafford prisoner, and cutting their throats (4.3). Jack marked the victory by cutting his forearm with his own dagger and the rebels set off for London.

Margaret clutched Suffolk’s head and vowed revenge (4.4). Henry by contrast insisted on dealing with the Cade menace by speaking to him. He accused Margaret, who still hugged and caressed Suffolk’s head, that she would mourn not for him were he dead. Margaret assured that she would die for him, but her heart was clearly not in her words.

A messenger brought news that Jack Cade had arrived in Southwark. The rebels stood up on the towers rattling their swords on the metal. Henry decided to flee to Killingworth. Margaret’s continued pampering of Suffolk’s head introduced a ridiculous note to the sense of impending disorder.

Scene 4.5 was cut, the action continuing as Jack Cade struck his staff on ground and sat on London-stone (4.6). A poor unfortunate man rushed in and cried “Jack Cade” seconds after he had declared it treason to address him by any other name than Mortimer. The offender was struck down and then stamped on.

Lord Say was captured and accused of corrupting youth by building a grammar school (4.7). He was killed immediately after dismissing the people of Kent as “mala gens”.

Buckingham and Clifford (Garry Cooper) offered a pardon to those who would abandon Cade (4.8). The commons sided with Clifford, but then returned to support Cade. Clifford evoked the French threat and they reverted to supporting the king, upon which Cade fled.

Henry’s joy at the neutralisation of the Cade menace was cut short by news of York’s return from Ireland, ostensibly to deal with Somerset (4.9). Henry instructed Buckingham to meet him and sent Somerset to the Tower temporarily. His brisk “Come wife!” showed Henry to be increasingly manly and commanding towards Margaret.

Iden (Mike Grady) found Jack Cade starving in his garden (4.10). After a brief fight, Cade was stabbed with his own knife. Iden finished him off by snapping his neck and dragged away the dead body, saying he would take Cade’s severed head to the king.

York came to claim the crown but told Buckingham, who intercepted him, that he was only interested in pursuing Somerset (5.1). He dispersed his troops on being told that Somerset had been confined to the Tower and pledged his loyalty and that of his sons, including the sinisterly limping Richard (Simon Harrison) whose left arm was held to his chest in a sling.

York knelt obediently to Henry. But when Margaret produced Somerset, now at liberty, York accused Henry of lying. The challenge culminated in open defiance as York claimed the crown. York was arrested by Somerset, who was backed in turn by Margaret.

Clifford supported Henry, while Warwick and Salisbury sided with York. The two factions that would soon go to war became ever more distinct.

Richard spat out his first words and he and the other Yorkists daubed their faces with white paint. The two sides gathered in the two towers. Richard dragged out the dead body of Somerset and revelled in having killed him. The drums sounded as the clouds of war gathered.

At the battle of St Albans, Clifford, his face painted Lancastrian red, confronted York (5.2). After a brief sword fight, York killed Clifford, whose body was found by his son, Young Clifford (David Hartley). As he consoled his dead father, he smeared his hand over the red paint on his forehead and used it to paint his own face. The poetic eloquence of the gory violence that Young Clifford swore to wreak on the Yorkists was very striking.

Margaret appeared in her leather armour, sword in hand, and fiercely told Henry to flee to safety in London as they were losing.

York and Salisbury relished their victory and decided to pursue Henry to London (5.3). They swung their swords high into the air and froze in an aggressive posture, which marked the cliff-hanger ending of Part Two.



The True Tragedy of the Duke of York

The Yorkists arrived in Parliament and revelled in their victory (1.1). Richard tossed to the ground a sack containing Somerset’s head. Warwick showed support for York and encouraged him to claim the crown.

Backed by his supporters, Henry entered through the yard to confront them. This led to a stand-off in which the rival soldiers raised their swords to head height and warily pointed them at their opponents, nervously switching their focus of attention.

Henry did not want more bloodshed and thought that York, who was sat on the throne, would respect him. Henry outlined his claim to the title. But as that title derived from his father’s rebellion, he realised it was weak. He argued in vain that Richard II had resigned the crown. In this tense atmosphere, Henry hugged those who spoke in his support.

Henry proposed to transfer the crown to York after his death. Naturally, his supporters were appalled. The queen was going to be told of this “unmanly deed”.

York grabbed at the offered crown like a starving man after food. He eventually relinquished it and kissed Henry.

Margaret shouted in anger at Henry’s disinheritance of Prince Edward, describing her husband as a “timorous wretch”. She divorced herself from him until the disinheritance act was repealed. Margaret sponged herself with red as did the Prince. Henry thought that his estranged family would respond if he wrote to them.

Richard displayed the evil genius of his sophistry as York was urged by his brothers to seize the crown immediately (1.2). He succeeded in convincing York, but Margaret’s army was on its way to challenge him. This entire sequence was backed by subtle drumming by Henry.

In the ensuing battle, Clifford killed Rutland (Joe Jameson) in revenge for his father’s death (1.3). Rutland clung to a ladder, but Clifford was determined to root out the entire family. Rutland was thrust to the ground and stabbed in the back as he screamed. He was turned over and stabbed in the front, then in the back once more. Now it was personal.

York appeared in rags to announce that his side had lost (1.4). He was tired and could not flee. Margaret entered immediately behind him. York was surrounded and Margaret addressed him from the throne. She put him on a molehill and, dagger in hand, mocked his pretensions to be king and mimicked Richard’s limp.

The lowest blow came when she asked where Rutland was. She showed York the napkin stained with Rutland’s blood, which she rubbed in his face. She placed a paper crown on his head to add to his humiliation.

York’s hands were tied with rope and a hood placed on his head, but it was taken off briefly, giving him a chance to insult the “Amazonian trull”. He chased her round the tower but was restrained when the rope ran out.

After this excellent monologue, he cried on the napkin to wash away Rutland’s blood and begged Clifford to kill him. Northumberland began to sympathise with York’s plight but Margaret pushed him to the ground. Clifford stabbed York from the front, while Margaret stabbed from the back. Margaret ordered his head to be cut off and placed on the gates of the city of York.

York’s sons wondered what had happened to him (2.1). They were dazzled by a vision of three suns. The hope this engendered was undercut by the news of York’s killing, of the Rutland napkin, and of the display of York’s head on the city gates.

Richard’s poetic description of his passion was very powerful as he gritted his teeth in revenge.

Warwick described how they had fled from St Albans. They decided to march on London again. Edward (Patrick Myles) was now Duke of York and was to be proclaimed king. News came of the approach of the queen’s army.

Margaret greeted Henry at York and pointed out York’s head (2.2). Henry was unhappy about the killing, but Clifford criticised his “harmful pity”. Henry knighted Prince Edward (Joe Jameson). A messenger brought news of Warwick’s support for Edward. Clifford told Henry to leave the battlefield because “the queen hath best success when you are absent”.

A parlay was called during which Margaret addressed Edward from the throne, her legs apart in a dominant posture. Richard entered angrily looking for Clifford and swearing vengeance for Rutland. Margaret bandied insults while Henry stood back, resuming his look of childish fright. Henry demanded to be heard, but the situation was now beyond words.

Richard shouted at Warwick complaining that he had retreated (2.3). But the Yorkists restored their courage.

Richard found Clifford (2.4), bashing a big metal club against the metal as his limped slowly and menacingly towards him. Loud drums accompanied their fight. Clifford overpowered Richard on the ground. But Richard retrieved a sword and stabbed Clifford just as Warwick turned up.

Henry described the ebb and flow of battle (2.5). He sat despondently on the molehill, realising he was not wanted in the combat. This relatively quiet moment made him sympathetic as he imagined himself a “homely swain” to an accompaniment of slow quiet drumming, which called to mind the distant conflict.

Henry hid in the tower to watch with a scared, appalled face as a son (Joe Jameson) discovered that he had just killed his own father, crouching over his dead body. The pair turned over, swapping places, to portray a father (Garry Cooper) who rued having killed his son. Using the same pair to portray these four characters was very effective.

The sequence culminated with both father and son speaking at once, gazing at each other side by side, with Henry in the middle with an appalled expression. The father touched the son’s face with his hand, and the son kissed it. Henry took both and joined their hands before they exited separately.

This was an instance where the doubling forced by the limited cast produced a very powerful result.

Margaret urged Henry to flee.

Clifford entered wounded and dying, fearing Henry’s overthrow (2.6). York’s sons seized on him. Richard put white paint on Clifford’s red face and he died silently amid their taunts. His head was severed offstage to replace York’s on the city gates.

The gamekeepers bearing crossbows spotted Henry wearing plain clothes on the tower (3.1). He described how Warwick had gone to get Lady Bona. Henry was visibly happier to be in disguise and out of trouble. Henry failed to convince the keepers to recognise him as rightful king and he was taken prisoner.

King Edward appeared in his crown and a regal green robe (3.2). Lady Grey (Beatriz Romilly) sat under the tower, faced outwards to the audience and replied to his questions dispassionately and factually, construing Edward’s talk of “love” as a subject rather than, as Edward hoped, as a potential wife.

Rejecting his proposition, she turned to face him and swore that honesty would be her dower. She became progressively angrier, and finally requested the return of her husband’s lands on her knees, which Edward eventually granted.

News came that Henry had been captured. Richard launched into a long soliloquy in which he plotted to get rid of his brothers to reach “far off shore” of sovereignty. He complained about his deformity, full of anger and self hate. He imagined himself lost in thorny wood. But far from being totally powerless, he knew that he could “smile and murders whiles I smile”.

This terrifying exposition of Richard’s bloody ambition was a great point at which to position the interval.

After the ultra serious end of the first half, 3.3 provided some jolly comic relief. The French court was portrayed as outrageously camp. King Lewis (Brendan O’Hea) sat on the throne, his legs crossed to show his hose-clad legs beneath his flowing blue gown, and sang in the style of Piaf for Margaret and Prince Edward. His speaking accent was straight out of ‘Allo, ‘Allo. Lady Bona was played by a man, which added to the hilarity.

Warwick had come to woo Lady Bona for Edward. Lewis got a laugh by referring to him as “naughty Warwick”. He held his hand and sat him on the ground. The king slowly leant back obliging Warwick to lean forward on top of him as he argued for King Edward. Lady Bona coughed raucously before switching into a high-pitched female voice. Lewis agreed that his sister should be Edward’s bride.

Lewis kissed the Post on the cheek and then full on the mouth. The letter he brought informed him that Edward had married Lady Grey. Lewis threw an hysterical fit, running around the back of the stage, kicking the drums and bashing the cymbals as he cried “is this the alliance that he seeks with France” before collapsing.

Faced with Edward’s duplicity, Warwick switched his allegiance back to Henry and bowed to Margaret. Lewis agreed to back an invasion.

Edward placed his new Queen Elizabeth on the throne and kissed her (4.1). Clarence (Gareth Pierce) criticised Edward for his choice, but she defended herself. The Post brought news that Lewis was sending an army and that Warwick had returned. Clarence and Somerset left to join Warwick, but Richard remained loyal.

Warwick, Somerset and Clifford prepared for battle. Warwick had smeared red paint over his Yorkist white. Clarence and Clifford joined him in doing so (4.2).

The king’s supporters beat on the tower and out fell Edward (4.3). Warwick kicked ‘duke’ Edward to the ground. His crown was snatched and he was bound and led away. They set off for London to free and restore Henry.

Queen Elizabeth crouched in tears telling Rivers that Edward had been taken prisoner (4.4). They went to sanctuary.

Scene 4.5 was cut so that the action continued with 4.6. Henry was restored to the crown, for which he thanked Warwick and Clarence. He made them join hands and appointed them both protectors, vowing to retire and lead a life of religious devotion.

He asked for Margaret and the Prince to be returned from France. But these preparations were cut short by news of Edward’s escape. Another fight was coming, but this time for once he displayed signs of tactical skill. But he still could not understand why people had turned against him.

Edward broke in and took Henry to the Tower. He and his forces set off for Coventry to deal with Warwick.

Warwick stood on the tower representing Coventry as Edward demanded his surrender (5.1.). Forces arrived to support Lancaster, with Margaret standing in the other tower. Clarence wiped the red from his face and rejoined his brother. Richard smirked “Welcome good Clarence”, a sign that Richard would not forget his treachery, the consequences of which would be seen later in his own play.

Warwick fled to Barnet but he was beaten in a sword fight with Edward.

Warwick was fatally wounded and was left alone dying (5.2). His long death soliloquy was commensurate with his character’s long journey. Oxford (Nigel Hastings) told him that Margaret had come from France, which caused him to revive briefly before he finally died.

Edward readied himself to meet the queen’s army against a backdrop of constant drumming (5.3).

Margaret stood on the tower and spoke to her troops before the battle of Tewkesbury, telling them to fight for the justice of their cause (5.4). Edward, below, gave his speech to the yard as if they were his troops.

Edward and Margaret fought. Margaret was captured, her crown was taken, and she was bound in ropes. Prince Edward was also bound with ropes. The Prince was defiant, but King Edward stabbed him, an enterprise in which he was joined enthusiastically by Richard and Clarence. Richard offered to fulfil Margaret’s wish to be killed, but Edward prevented him. Richard set off instead to the Tower.

Margaret, her wrists still bound, propped up Ned and cried over him. She begged the king and Clarence to kill her, but was taken away.

Henry was a prisoner in the Tower, kneeling in a blue smock adorned with a crucifix as he read a book (5.6). Richard crept in behind. Henry seemed to sense his presence before Richard announced his arrival by knocking his metal club on the framework.

Henry steeled himself for his end with a demeanour that was angry but firm. He prophesied that Richard would bring havoc. Richard snarled at Henry’s insults and limped forward as Henry railed at him. As the confrontation reached a peak, Richard’s snarling vyied to outdo the increasing force of Henry’s denunciations. Crying “I’ll hear no more”, Richard struck Henry and stabbed him. Henry remained true to his principles and died pardoning Richard.

Richard collapsed under his weight so that Henry ended up on top, obliging Richard to struggle free. Showing his animalistic side, he pulled at Henry’s garment with his teeth like a dog.

He stood over Richard and symbolically struck his metal club down onto the throne, but did not actually strike his enemy. Richard spoke about his own cruelty and deformity adding that he had been born with teeth. Full of horror at himself, he threw away Henry’s book, before declaring “I am myself alone”.

The king, queen and their newborn baby sat on the throne, while Richard dragged Henry’s body aside. Then Richard warned that Clarence should be beware as he and the rest were his next targets.

King Edward came forward and summarised his victories (5.7). He cradled his young son as he talked of peace.

His brothers kissed the baby, who was finally taken by Richard. The royal couple returned to the throne. The king ordered that Margaret be sent to France. Richard sat at the foot of the throne still holding and looking at the baby.

When King Edward said “For here I hope begins our lasting joy” an ominous drum sounded and Richard glanced up suspiciously at the audience. This hinted at his antics in the sequel and constituted the fly in the ointment of Edward’s domestic bliss. The performance finished with the cast singing the Jack Cade song.

Conclusions

The trio of productions were a great achievement. The plays provided an epic panorama of violence mediated by verse and fine rhetoric, the whole backed by an impressive use of percussion, mostly drumming provided by the cast.

Skilled delivery made the formulaic and repetitive nature of the denunciations and swearing of vengeance very digestible.

The evil flourish with which Simon Harrison’s Richard concluded the trilogy only whetted the appetite to see him as Richard III.

But it was Graham Butler’s Henry that remained the focus of attention, transforming from frightened boy to young adult, seemingly cut down just at the moment he acquired the maturity to be the king he had been expected to be.

Burning Prospero’s book

The Indian Tempest, The Globe, 3 August 2013

The Footsbarn theatre company brought their travelling production to the Globe and fitted its tent, dedicated lighting and architectural features onto the stage and in the yard.

A circular sheet occupied the centre of the main stage which was initially shrouded by white sheets hooked onto large sticks placed in holders. A spiral walkway led up to a platform stage right, while in the yard stood a large iron cart with ramps at either end.

Sheets were draped across the tiring house to enable silhouette effects at key moments.

The uncompromising way that the production inserted itself into the Globe space hinted at the distinctness of its other features. This was a production that asserted its uniqueness before it began.

The storm took place behind the white sheets draped around the front of the centre circle (1.1). Drumming and music was accompanied by the shouting of the ship’s company until the sheets were taken down to reveal Ferdinand (Haris ‘Haka’ Resic) reaching out and crying “Father!” as he was pulled away by Ariel (Gopalakrishnan Kundamkumarath) towards the stage left steps. The other occupants of the ship disappeared into the tiring house.

Miranda (Rosanna Goodall) crouched on the cart to address Prospero (Reghoothaman Domodaran Pillai) with her worries about the ship (1.2). She crouched like a coiled spring with an alert look. She brought an energy to her observations as if poised to help rather than meekly accepting events from a position of powerlessness.

Prospero’s long white hair matched his white robe. After assuring Miranda that no one had been harmed in the storm, he set about explaining how they had come to be on the island.

As he did so, another Prospero wearing a mask appeared on the cart and took over the narrative while the stage Prospero remained silent and sat serenely with Miranda at his feet. The onstage characters effectively became a dumbshow for the offstage narration.

Antonio (Mark Ruan Pearce) entered to participate in the dramatisation of his usurpation of his brother Prospero. As he took over the reins of power, Prospero held aloft the sceptres of his dukedom in his raised hands. Antonio stood behind the chair and took them from him. His dealings with Alonso, the Duke of Naples, were seen in silhouette behind a sheet.

Miranda held puppets of Prospero and herself demonstrating their affection. The puppets were then placed on a model ship, along with a miniature book symbolising his library, to depict their banishment. Prospero mentioned Gonzalo’s kindness and the man himself appeared so that we would recognise him when he turned up later on the island.

The stage Prospero spoke again to explain what he had in store for his enemies. Miranda was sent to sleep on the platform as Ariel appeared on the cart.

Ariel was a gamely sprite who stared, his mouth agape, babbling to himself. “Beautiful, beautiful”, he exclaimed, establishing himself as a comic figure in the mould of Puck rather than a mystic presence.

He ran unhappily onto the stage when told there was more work to be done. The offstage Prospero once again took over narration of the story of Ariel’s imprisonment by Sycorax.

This and the initial narration were essentially magic effects that enhanced the mood of the performance.

Prospero woke Miranda to go visit Caliban (Paddy Hayter), who like other characters made his initial appearance on the cart. He immediately established his bestial nature by hurling logs from the cart over the heads of the audience onto the stage. When he came into clear view his physiognomy really did herald his soul.

A dark gravelly menacing voice issued forth from a face that had the hideous look of gargoyle. His words began as noises that seemed to rise from the drains below the street before taking form as speech. Everything about Caliban suggested darkness. He was redolent of the “unwholesome fen” about which he fulminated.

He rushed onstage from the cart to confront Prospero. His anger was mixed with ribald pleasure as he rubbed himself, relishing the prospect of using Miranda to people the island with Calibans.

Ariel brought Ferdinand to the top of the platform while Prospero escorted Miranda. She twirled around as if under his spell and was then presented with the sight of the young man.

Full of delight at what she had seen, she ran underneath the platform. When she emerged from its shadow, Ferdinand addressed her in French and she replied in the same language. Prospero spoke to him in English and he replied in English.

Prospero was quite violent when subduing Ferdinand’s resistance to his arrest. Not only did he immobilise he sword, but he also gestured with his staff a distant stabbing motion that translated into blows felt painfully by the young man.

The nobles wore masks with Gonzalo’s (Vincent Gracieux) notable for its half-smile and whiskered cheeks. Alonso’s (Paddy Hayter again) mask depicted a careworn frown (2.1).

The character of Adrian was cut, so Antonio and Sebastian (Shaji Karyat) did not wager who would speak first out of him and Gonzalo. Francisco was also cut, and the two missing characters’ lines were reallocated.

After speaking about his ideal republic from the platform, Gonzalo fell asleep there soon followed by Alonso who slumbered at its base. Antonio corrupted Sebastian with his plot to murder Alonso, but their blades were frozen midair when they tried to carry it out.

The aftermath was played for comedy with Antonio sheepishly trying to convince the others that they had heard “a whole herd of lions”.

Caliban took shelter in a cylindrical wicker loop as Italian-accented Trinculo (Shaji Karyat again) in his yellow jacket and red coxcomb appeared on the cart (2.2). Trinculo was accompanied by a small foam cloud that had been soaked in water so that it dripped like a raincloud when dangled high above him on a stick. This symbolised the oncoming storm.

Finding his way to the main stage, he lay inside the wicker loop on top of Caliban. Stephano (Vincent Gracieux again) appeared on the cart. He had a French accent and a ruddy drunkard’s face. Caliban responded immediately to the drink that Stephano poured into his mouth. He looked very drunk and immensely satisfied, preparing us for his adoration of his new masters.

Having extracted Trinculo from the wickerwork, Stephano was beset by Caliban who knelt in awe at the provider of the “celestial liquor”. Caliban actually kissed Stephano’s foot; the reality of that gesture underscored the sincerity of Caliban’s abject surrender.

Caliban swore to do them service. He rubbed his groin promising to show them where “crabs grow”, brandished his long nails when saying he would use them to dig out pignuts, and also vowed to bring them “filly-willy-berts”, before dancing joyously at his new freedom.

Ferdinand laboured carrying the heavy logs as ordered by Prospero (3.1). But when Miranda offered to bear them for him, he suddenly pretended that they were light in order to impress her. However, he clumsily let one drop onto his foot spoiling the effect.

Ferdinand spoke to Miranda in French to ask her name. The word play on Miranda and “admiration” in English worked in French translation where she was “admirable”. Miranda offered to be his wife and added a romantic touch to the moment by showering Ferdinand with dried petals as she spoke.

The rebel alliance met over a table with cups chained to it, an item of ship furniture salvaged from the supposed wreck (3.2). Ariel ventriloquised Trinculo, prompting an angry Stephano to hit him with a salami, which he also stuck uncomfortably between Trinculo’s legs, jerking it upwards.

Caliban produced a puppet version of Miranda to convince Stephano that it was worth killing Prospero to win her.

Music sounded and Caliban acted out his speech about the isle being full of noises. For all his darkness and menace, Caliban’s whimsical description of how he “cried to dream again” was very moving.

Interval

After the interval, comparatively late compared with most productions that pause after 2.2, we caught up with the tired nobles (3.3). The “strange shapes” that brought a banquet on stage were black figures with puppet heads held aloft above the shrouded performers. Their rounded white faces looked distinctly French in style. There was something eerily dreamlike about the way they floated about the stage, gracefully manipulated by the puppeteers.

Two poles were placed centre stage on top of which were balanced plates of food. Small pops were heard and paper debris flew up from the plates to represent the disappearance of the banquet.

Interestingly, the figure of the harpy was voiced by the actor playing Caliban. This was presumably because he was the most frightening of the actors and the one most suited to portraying the ultimate in monsters in the play.

Another performer flitted around the frightened nobles in a dark, black feathery costume with wings, while Ariel brandished a metal frame beak that snapped shut with a metallic clack representing the harpy’s ravenous mouth. The metal beak ended up on the platform from where it was thrown. It landed open, engulfing one of the noble’s heads in its maw, providing one of the production’s most effective and daring moments.

Prospero had freed Ferdinand from his shackles and explained his subterfuge to him on the cart in the yard (4.1). The official betrothal between Ferdinand and Miranda was followed by the appearance of Ceres, a masked figure with long straws radiating in a semi-circle from her head and with artificial straw breasts in the manner of a fertility goddess. She scattered rice into the air and dancing ensued on stage as Ferdinand and Miranda celebrated their forthcoming marriage.

The exotic figure of Ceres was one of the iconic images of the production. But for all its colour and spectacle this was not the dramatic highlight of the piece.

The celebrations were interrupted by Prospero remembering the rebels’ conspiracy. His ensuing speech about the disappearing vision, with its famous closing lines, had little impact because this was not a wistful production, but one grounded in earthy storytelling.

Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo made their way up and across the cart and down its far side wearing grassy headdresses that hinted at their wanderings in the dirt and mire of the island.

In order to distract them from their mission to kill Prospero, items of fine clothing were wafted across the stage on the end of large poles, the garments flying over the heads of the audience. The trio tried on the clothes before performers in dog masks came to scare them away.

A comic note was struck as one of them found a large bone and threw it to distract the dogs. This did not work. Then another of them found a bouncy ball and threw that, which seemed to work for one of the dogs, but the others still pursued them.

Prospero stood on the platform satisfied that his plan was succeeding (5.1). Ariel persuaded him to be merciful, but this transformation from vengeance to forgiveness was not overly emphasised. The contemplative aspect of Ariel is commonly brought out at this moment in a production. But here, Ariel was characterised as a comedy sprite and so was portrayed without a serious side.

However, Prospero’s abjuration of his rough magic was passionately delivered and thereby impressively dramatic.

Ariel brought in the king and his party. They walked slowly as a large black net was lifted off the ground in the centre circle and deposited over them, trapping the men as their hands reached upwards trying to escape.

Prospero talked of them as his prisoners but then ordered their release and caused the net to be removed.

Alonso knelt in front of Prospero, who responded by turning aside from him, instead ushering Gonzalo to his side, greeting his favourite as “First, noble friend…” This neatly summarised Prospero’s priorities and the reason for them.

Finally he used his magic to draw his brother Antonio in front of him. Prospero’s distaste for his perfidious sibling was written across his scowling face, underscoring his statement that to call him brother “would even infect my mouth”. He followed this by repeating “Shanti, shanti, shanti”, a Sanskrit invocation of peace, in an attempt to calm himself.

He took the crown from Antonio and placed it on his own head.

Ferdinand and Miranda were revealed in silhouette behind a sheet to Alonso who went to join them. Miranda came out from behind the sheet to greet the brave new world.

The rebels were brought in and Caliban lay on the ground as Prospero acknowledged him as his own. Prospero freed Ariel, who became ecstatic at his liberty. He delivered the epilogue, at the end of which he cast away his staff and book before exiting.

But this was not the end of the performance.

Caliban picked up Prospero’s staff and pointed it menacingly at the islanders who had gathered to watch. He indicated by gesture that the power of the staff was not good to use and threw it away.

Next he looked at Prospero’s book and took it with him up onto the platform. He lay on his side and began tearing out pages. He screwed them into thin wraps and set them on fire by inserting them into one of several candle holders around the edge of the platform. After symbolically consigning Prospero’s magic to the fire, he lay and slept contentedly.

Conclusions

Prospero’s overriding desire to reclaim his dukedom seemed to eclipse the forgiveness he extended to his brother, partly because his conversion to goodness was an incomplete one.

The rendering of the story as a fable prevented some of its weightier aspects from being developed. As a symptom of this, we were presented with a one-dimensional Ariel. This was compensated, though, by the most marvellous Caliban, whose gravelly voice made for a very convincing monster.

The production was full of spectacle, but its most moving moments were not those that were the most photogenic. Crucially, the use of multiple languages (French, English, Sanskrit and Malayalam) worked very well and added to the production rather than being a bolted-on gimmick.

The concluding libricide was novel and striking. But given the controversial history of this practice, is burning even a few pages of a book something to be presented as entertainment?