This is not a production for the purists as the traditional opening chorus is ditched in favour of a dying Henry IV handing over the crown to Prince Hal.
It is typically challenging rethinking of the traditional text by dramaturg Cordelia Lynn who offers a smartly edited dark version that is a million miles away from the jingoish of Olivier’s technicolour movie version. That propaganda piece focused on Henry as a selfless warrior for a nation and empire in its greatest peril, but Lynn’s king is a conflicted man who reluctantly embraces the relentless brutality displayed by monarchs of that period, and familiar to Shakespeare’s audiences who had often fought in bloody campaigns.
This is co-production with Headlong whose artistic director Holly Race Roughan places the uniformly excellent cast in seats on either side of the stage popping up to announce the acts and who they are. It is a bold move, but she pulls it off.
In this version the crown rests heavy on the head of Oliver Johnstone’s volatile young Henry learning how to rule as he goes along, suppressing his rage to play the long game to claim France as his own when the French offer him a tennis ball as an insult. That anger soon comes to the fore when in another break with tradition he kills his treacherous friend Scroop with his bare hands, and sanctions the execution of Bardolph, another old face from his youth.
Johnstone manages a number of gear changes well as one moment he’s almost whispering the famous ‘once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more’ speech in a foetal position as he realises what he as King is asking of his troops. The next he is sinisterly weaving round the terrified governor of the besieged Harfleur threatening to kill everyone, including the babies, in echoes of what is happening in Ukraine where mercenaries are being slaughtered with sledgehammers.
The scene where Henry seeks the hand of Princess Kathrine of France as they speak in different languages is often played for laughs, but here a Henry now tempered by death brutally forces a kiss on Josephine Callies, who rails against being given to this angry stranger as a spoil of war.
In Race Roughan and Lynn’s version we are asked to consider Henry less as a national hero, but whether he is in fact a war criminal as he orders the execution of French prisoners during the pivotal battle of Agincourt, including Eleanor Henderson’s wonderfully arrogant Prince Louis. The battle scenes cleverly executed by the hard working ensemble does offer some context for Henry’s actions as his small band of brothers defeat the numerically superior French.
Moi Tran’s bleak set full of bronzes and mirrors creates a sense of dislocation, but a note in the programme suggesting that the green curtain represents some kind of eco protest is stretching it somewhat.
The final made up coda as a young woman plunges into the depths our modern day immigration system may divide audiences, but it does support this production’s premise that centuries on from Agincourt nothing much in the cost of winning power and human nature have really changed.
Henry V is at Leeds Playhouse until Saturday 25th February. To book 0113 213 7700 or www.leedsplayhouse.org.uk
Reviewer: Paul Clarke
Reviewed: 15th February 2023
North West End UK Rating: ★★★★