One Henry too many

'HENRY V', RSC simulcast at Cineworld, 22.10.15

Big fail, sorry to say.  However, it confirms my almost total mistrust of the London critics who are a complete waste of space!  But first of all I blame that scribbler from Stratford.  In Henry IV parts I & II he explored the 'body politic' of 'not-so-Merrie Olde England' and showed the development of a playboy prince into a man ready to rule.  Those two plays (plus the sad tale of Richard II which precedes them) are amongst his very greatest works and are perhaps the first to show in detail that 'the personal is political'.  To put it bluntly, Prince Hal was a drunken, yobbish 'Hooray Henry' of the worst sort and encouraged in his misdemeanours by that 'butt of old sack', Jack Falstaff.  However, throughout these twin tales we keep catching glimpses of a colder, more detached, more ruthless Hal and so it comes as no surprise when at the end, on becoming king, he rids himself of Falstaff.  So far, so brilliant ... but then 'our Will' went one step further and wrote Henry V, a 'Henry' too far.

To be honest, I don't quite know what to make of Henry V as a play simply because I have never studied it.  Of course, like everyone I have seen the film versions and they, no doubt, have coloured my view of it.  I think the last stage version I saw was with Kenneth Brannagh decades ago and I can remember being somewhat under-whelmed.  Now, I am beginning to realise that perhaps it was the play not the players which contained the weakness.

If so, then there is some excuse for last night's effort which was a bore!  The production in terms of style was all over the place in the usual 'modern' fancy in which some of the soldiers looked medieval and some of them looked like survivors of the Western Front.  Needless to say, they were all colours and in some scenes a girl played a soldier so you instantly kissed goodbye to any sense of history.  Why, I moaned and sobbed to myself, can't modern directors serve the writer and not suppose that somehow their additions and fancies are what Master Shakespeare would have staged if only he had the advice, in this case, of Mr. Gregory Doran, the Principal High Panjandrum of the RSC.  I should add, before the PC Brigade come hammering on my door at midnight, that if you decide to produce a united nations reading of this play, then fine, do it in the abstract and cut back on all the ancient Englishness of it.

I stress that because this is a very English play, or to be precise, a very British play.  We are given the first 'see, there was an Englishman, a Welshman, a Scotsman and an Irishman' joke!  And one of the best items in this production was making the Scotsman totally incomprehensible - brought the house down!  However, those four caricatures make you realise just how deep the roots of nationhood go. 

At the end, one is left wondering quite what this play is for?  Shakespeare shows us that "war is hell" - think we knew that one, Will! - and that politicians, both regal and political, will go to it with a relish if it fits their usually personal purposes.  King Hal simply jumps on the merry-go-round and after a huge slaughter - but mainly French so that's all right - he gets the girl and a new country estate, er, France, actually - oh, and the girl, too!  The play is a chronicle but no more.  None of the characters develop or change.  And 'our Will', having already written the three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, we know that "the wheel of fire" will just carry on wheeling round so one is forced to ask what is the point of Henry V?

This production provided no answers which is hardly surprising.  Some might say that it's worth it for those great battle speeches.  Well, maybe, but not as delivered by the eye-ball swivelling Mr. Alex Hassell, so beloved by the London critics.  He was rubbish!  The words were delivered with great clarity, the man is a tribute to all those dialogue coaches they employ at the RSC, but they came out steadily at a dead even rate of knots and produced nil effect because the bloody man forgot, or was told to forget, that he was delivering verse not prose!  I doubt the man could spell iambic pentameter let alone understand what it means and I can see all those post-modernist practitioners at the RSC telling him not to bother with all that old-fashioned stuff, these days, darling, after all, Sir Peter Hall and Roger Barton are all so yesterday!

Perhaps I can best point up the dismal standard of this production by re-telling a 'joke' that the company used at least twice in order to wring a snigger from their audience whose intelligence they obviously despise.  One of the characters is the 'Constable of France' and thus the first syllable of his title was heavily emphasised at every opportunity and, lo and behold, the sniggers arrived on cue!

Sorry, Will, you should have stopped at Henry IV.

 

 

 

Comments

[Whitewall]

David do you think it's possible that decades of television showing these various productions of Will's classics may have jaded people's view of them today? TV often does a poor job with authenticity. Lowest common denominator and all that.

[H]

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.

Worth it for that alone! Thanks, Will, for NOT stopping after H IV 2!

[David Duff]

Possibly, Whiters, but simulcast is a different concept from TV. Here, the cameras move in and film an actual live performance so the quality is very definitely with the company and the director concerned. I saw two simulcasts of Shakespeare comedies from the RSC recently, 'Loves Labours Lost' and 'Love's Labours Won' (Much Ado About Nothing). Simply superb and if you want to try them out I'm sure they're on DVD sale, so if you haven't got a cinema complex near you that is signed up for simulcasts you could watch on your TV.

Actually, thinking about it, some of the specially-made film/TV versions might improve people's views of Shakespeare because, apart from anything else, they cut the text which is not always a bad thing - as the opening scenes of 'Henry V' demonstrate when the tedious Archbishop of Canterbury 'bores for Britain' on the intricacies of Hal's claim to France. Of course, the RSC (the Church of Shakespeare) dare not take the cutting knife to too much of the 'holy' text! Brannagh's film, I seem to remember, was an excellent example of a cut and edited version.