To Stratford, to see Henry V. This was the first play we saw together at Stratford, back in 2015, so a comparison will be interesting.
A straightforward run, parking in the Swan's Nest Lane car park, and then a short stroll around to kill time...
Never mind - the food (and the company) was as good as ever:
Full to the brim, we retrieved the car and moved it to the Church Street Car Park, the easier to pick it up after the play. A stroll around the perimeter of the theatre in the early evening sunlight, looking back from whence we had come:
So what of the play? Meh.
I lack the time and critical chops to summarise accurately all the reviews listed below, but ChatGPT managed it in seconds:
"A thoughtful, intelligent, politically aware production that many critics admired - but just as many found emotionally underpowered, dramatically uneven, or oddly distant".
-in other words, this was a real Marmite production.
My overall impression was that Director Tamara Harvey, Fight Director Kate Waters and Movement Director Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster wanted to create a production that was "different". The problem was that the result reminded me of an old Muppets sketch in which two elderly hecklers sat in a theatre box and commented on the performance on stage:
"This is something else!"
"You mean it's good?"
"No – I mean it's something else!"
- and I really felt it was "something else"...
So WHY didn't I like it? To be honest, it took several days of reflection to be able to answer that, but these are my main gripes:
1. This production began, not with the Chorus, but with a reimagined scene from Henry IV Part 2, in which Henry IV is apparently lying in state and Henry V - believing his father to be dead - tries on his crown, only for Henry IV to wake up and chastise his son for wishing him dead and seizing the crown too eagerly. Not only did this feel superfluous, but the discovery that Henry père was not dead but merely sleeping was played for laughs, which just didn't feel right.
2. Speaking of the Chorus – there was none. The lines normally spoken by the Chorus were assigned primarily to Henry and, in the final scene, to Katherine – to what end? You may well ask.
3. The traitors Scroop, Cambridge and Grey (beheaded in real life and usually executed offstage in the play) were, on this occasion, all hanged on stage. For what reason? It really felt to me as if the production team had invented a new on-stage visual trick (short-drop hanging with convulsing bodies on the ends of ropes) that they were keen to show off, rather than because it added significantly to the story.
4. The siege of Harfleur and the battle of Agincourt were staged without a single weapon. In fact the only weapon visible throughout the entire production was a small knife.
5. So how was all that fighting portrayed? By members of the cast, and around 15 supernumeraries drawn from local colleges drafted in to swell the battle and crowd scenes, dancing around in highly stylised ways. This might have seemed a good idea to the directors, but for me simply brought to mind Pan's People c1975…
6. What made the siege and battle scenes even more annoyingly confusing was that the French and English were dressed the same, and many actors played more than one part in the same scene, with the result that people were seen to die, come back to life and then apparently start fighting for the other side…
7. As Henry, Alfred Enoch was simply too affable. Before Agincourt, the English soldiers were sick, exhausted, hungry and heavily outnumbered. To be truly effective, the "St Crispin's" speech needs to be delivered in such a way that it stirs the English to forget their misery and to pour everything into a "do or die" effort. Instead, Henry came across more like a middle-ranking account executive trying to gee up his sales team just before their financial year end - I really don't think I would have followed him to Starbucks, let alone to a possible grisly death… Even more annoying was that the delivery of that famous speech was RUINED by Enoch; when assuring those about to fight that in years to come
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
the words supposedly spoken by the old man were delivered in some kind of sub-fourth-form-drama-group imitation of the way that a frail old man might speak, in a disturbingly high-pitched and over the top voice. Had the rest of the play been perfect I would still have hated it for this abomination.
8. The scene in which Katherine is being taught how to speak English by her lady-in-waiting was transposed from its traditional Court setting to a French field hospital. As they walked among the injured French, discussing hands, fingers, nails, necks and chins, they caused the injured even more agony by touching or pulling at the parts of the body they were discussing. For me, this brought to mind the scene in the film Airplane where the singing stewardess's flailing guitar knocks out a young patient's IV drip, causing her to start expiring onscreen... ...but without the humour.
Enough – you get the idea. And if you think I'm being unkind, have a look at Peter Viney's blog, linked to below.
An uneventful drive home, with the post-mortem discussions already beginning.
