Henry V, Globe Theatre, London, June 2012

Jamie Parker in the title role gave a superb account of a king come of age since his youthful indiscretions, and that wonderful St. Crispin’s day speech, responding to Westmorland’s wishing a few more men for the forthcoming battle of Agincourt, is delivered as if he is making it up as he goes along. In fact the whole expedition to France carries an air of unlikely providence about it, led by the king’s determination to requite the insulting gift of tennis balls from the Dauphin of France. And at one point Parker enters the audience to clap a tall chap on the upper arm and shout, “God for Harry!”

The Battle, Globe image/ Stephen Vaughan

This fine production by Dominic Dromgoole has the feel of historical authenticity, with Jonathan Fensom’s costumes admirably showing the dirt and grime of the fifteenth century, and those English crosses painted onto several tunics add to the effect. In fact the feeling of being in another time starts right at the beginning as Canterbury and Ely converse while engaged in their ablutions, washing their hands afterwards in a bowl provided by the Chorus. And when Henry’s ambassador goes to France he unrolls a family tree, elegantly made and showing descent from Edward III. These are serious moments, but interspersed with lightness that caused the audience to laugh out loud, and Sam Cox as Pistol was wonderful fun. So was Brendan O’Hea as Captain Fluellen, and Kurt Egyiawan, with his superb diction, gave an amusing spin to the grandiloquence of the Dauphin.

Pistol and Gower, Globe image/ John Haynes

Jamie Parker himself created laughter and applause near the beginning as he stopped at a good moment to allow the noise of a circling helicopter to die away. It came back and buzzed around for ten minutes, but nothing could put this performance out. We were immersed in a short period of the Hundred Years’ War, even if Brid Brennan as Chorus in the prologue regretted the inadequacy of a stage drama to represent the glory of one of the greatest battles in that war.

Katherine and Henry, Globe image/ John Haynes

But this was a team effort with fine acting that conveyed the drama exquisitely, and Olivia Ross was wonderful, both as the English boy and the French Princess Katherine, who marries Harry of England. As history tells us, their son, born the year before his father’s death became Henry VI, the last of the house of Lancaster. The Globe is surely the greatest venue for Shakespeare, particularly under the direction of Dominic Dromgoole, and this Henry V comes over with huge appeal.

Performances continue until August 26 — for details click here.

All’s Well That Ends Well, Globe Theatre, London, May 2011

A young Count, Bertram is brought up in the same household as Helena, a doctor’s daughter he has neither courted nor encouraged. She loves him, is desperate to marry him, and his mother favours the match, but his adamant refusal is over-ruled by the king, so he leaves home, and we should sympathise with him. Yet we don’t. Shakespeare gives us a most dislikeable character, unnecessarily brutal in his rejection of a fine young woman who has miraculously cured the king’s sickness.

Ellie Piercy as Helena with Sam Cox as the king, all photos by Ellie Kurttz

On the other hand, Helena herself is hard to love. She is no Juliet — I’ll prove more true than those that have more cunning to be strange — for though wedded to him, she is yet a stranger and her cunning hoists him on his own petard. He writes a letter saying, When thou canst get the ring upon my finger which never shall come off, and show me a child begotten of thy body that I am father to, then call me husband: but in such a ‘then’ I write a ‘never’, yet this clever woman, who performed a miracle on the king, produces another on her husband. Using the ‘bed-trick’ she gets another well-born young woman to promise to lie with him at night, acquire his ring, and then substitutes herself.

Colin Hurley as Lavatch with Janie Dee as the Countess

Although Shakespeare’s title yields one of the most well-known aphorisms in English, this play itself is little performed. The young couple are unsympathetic and occlude their meanings in a plethora of prodoses and apodoses, continuing even to the end as Bertram says to the king, If she, my liege, can make me know this clearly/ I’ll love her dearly ever, ever, dearly, to which she responds, If it appear not plain and prove untrue . . . To these quasi-endearments the king finishes by saying, All yet seems well, and if it end so meet,/ The bitter past, more welcome is the sweet.

James Garnon as Parolles

The king — the lynch pin of this play — was superbly portrayed by Sam Cox, with noble bearing and fine diction yet still with a subtle comedic touch. In fact the wittiness of this production by John Dove came over well, aided particularly by James Garnon as Bertram’s friend Parolles, a braggart and coward, and with Colin Hurley as Lavatch, the fool in the Countess’s household. She, the mother of Bertram, was vividly played by Janie Dee, exhibiting life and good sense in the same measure as her son lacked it. Her affection for Ellie Pearcy’s well drawn portrayal of Helena helped give us some sympathy for this rather too clever young woman, who was well matched by Naomi Cranston as the shrewd young Diana who apparently seduces Bertram. He of course is not to be favoured by the audience, but Sam Crane portrayed his unlikeability mainly as diffidence, and his speeches were often a string of words generating little sense, with a voice that could not be clearly heard when he turned his back to the audience. But the cast as a whole did a superb job of bringing this strange comedy to life, and their dancing on stage when the play was over allowed all the characters but one to show rhythm and sparkle.

Well worth all the effort of those rehearsals, this production continues until August 21 — for more details click here.

Anne Boleyn, Globe Theatre, London, July 2010

This play has a wonderful role for the eponymous heroine, and Miranda Raison portrayed her superbly as an attractive, sexy, and determined young woman, more than a match for everyone at court except Thomas Cromwell. He — the man who engineered her downfall — was played here by John Dougall as sure-footed and ruthless, ready to abuse his power as he saw fit.

Miranda Raison as Anne Boleyn, photo by Manuel Harlan

The story is that he destroys Anne before she can warn the king about his maladministration of funds from the dissolution of the monasteries. But hadn’t the king tired of her? Didn’t he find Jane Seymour an attractive alternative to a wife who failed to produce a son? If so this play showed no attraction of the king towards Jane Seymour. She appeared only to be a tool of Cromwell, put in at the last minute, and the king’s affections for Anne never seemed to diminish. Yes, it may well be true that had Anne produced a son her position would have been impregnable, and yes this play did show that the birth of a deformed baby was an important factor, but it seemed as if the king’s role was subservient to that of Cromwell, which was odd. Did Anne really meet William Tyndale, during a journey he made secretly to England? In this play she met him twice, but the second meeting was unconvincing. Tyndale’s acolytes were very rude to her, yet she kept pleading with them. Surely a woman as shrewd as Anne, brought up with the intrigues of the French court, would have had little patience with deliberate insults, and backed out of an impossible situation.

Act I built up a steady momentum, and I liked Anne’s announcement of a fifteen minute intermission as she scuttled off to the bedroom with the king, but Act II suddenly transported us nearly seventy years into the future. All at once we were faced with James VI of Scotland, successor to Anne’s daughter Queen Elizabeth. And then the play switched unpredictably between past and future. History tells us that Anne was beheaded at the Tower of London, and some say that her ghost walks there still. Perhaps it does, but did James I of England see it, as he did in this play by Howard Brenton, directed by John Dove? At one level we seemed to be at a history lesson, but with so many laughs for the audience I could no longer to take it seriously.

James Garnon played a wittily serious James VI — he was after all a highly educated man whose intellect was often underrated — and Anthony Howell portrayed a virile and attractive Henry VIII. In the recent Globe production of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, Cardinal Wolsey showed immense gravitas, before having the ground cut from under him by Anne Boleyn, but here Colin Hurley played him as an irascible weakling. Perhaps that was the intention, but the contrast between the two plays was ill judged, unless we are supposed to take them as fictions bearing little resemblance to history. I very much liked Sam Cox as Dean Lancelot Andrewes, and Peter Hamilton Dyer as William Tyndale, and I loved the costumes by Hilary Lewis. Anne’s dresses were glorious, and Miranda Raison’s smouldering sex appeal and assertive shrewdness in that role was by far the most vital thing about this play.

Henry VIII, Globe Theatre, London, May 2010

This is one of Shakespeare’s last works, written in collaboration with John Fletcher, who later became his successor as chief playwright to the King’s Men. It was originally known under the title All is True, rather than Henry VIII, perhaps because the King does not have the main role, appearing in only nine of the seventeen scenes.  The  principal role is for Cardinal Wolsey, who has some memorable lines, particularly during his final speech, “Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, He would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies”.

Dominic Rowan as Henry VIII, photo by John Tramper

The play deals partly with the national crisis of the Reformation, starting with events following a ceremonial treaty with France engineered by Wolsey, to the gradual dismissal and divorce of Queen Katherine, the advent of Anne Boleyn, the downfall of Wolsey, the attempted plot against Archbishop Cranmer, and his subsequent christening of Anne’s daughter Elizabeth — the queen who would later become a patron of Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre. Cranmer gives a speech predicting a glorious reign for her, and the audience at the time would remember Elizabeth’s funeral, and have known very well that Cranmer was burned as one of the three Oxford martyrs under her predecessor Queen Mary.

In the meantime this play contains plenty of scheming, including interesting scenes between Wolsey and Katherine of Aragon. She distrusts him, though he makes every effort to persuade her he is sympathetic to her cause, “Why should we, good lady, upon what cause, wrong you? … The way of our profession is against it. We are to cure such sorrows, not to sow ’em”. When news of Wolsey’s death reaches her she forgives him, and then dies herself, blessed with a vision of peace.

Miranda Raison as Anne Bullen (Boleyn), photo by John Tramper

This production by Mark Rosenblatt, with designs by Angela Davies, clothes the players in magnificent Tudor costumes, and allows the audience to see the characters before and after they meet the king. This is cleverly done by having them come out of one door, in through another and out again, or something like that — it works very well. The costumes are truly beautiful and the occasional use of puppets is brilliant. Ian McNeice is a very strong Wolsey, with excellent stage presence, Kate Duchêne is entirely convincing as Queen Katherine, and Sam Cox is very striking as the Lord Chamberlain, and as First Citizen. Henry is portrayed as a lively, handsome man, well played by Dominic Rowan, and the relatively small part of Anne Bullen (Boleyn) is very attractively played by Miranda Raison, who will appear again as the eponymous heroine in Howard Brenton’s new play Anne Boleyn, later in the Globe’s season.

Anne Boleyn starts on July 24, and both it and Henry VIII continue until August 21— for more details click here.