The Histories Review
Kings of a great long weekend
The RSC’s cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays has been the ultimate cultural marathon, exhilarating audiences and showcasing an army of new talent.
It has been one of the supreme experiences of my theatre-going lifetime: eight plays adding up to more than 24 hours (excluding intervals), spread over two evenings plus two whole days, each starting at 10.30 in the morning and finishing more than 12 hours later. If the RSC’s complete cycle of Shakespeare history plays is so shattering an epic for the audience, what can it be like for the actors, who have been doing nothing else in Stratford and London these last two years and more?
Forget Wagner’s Ring cycle, a mere 16 hours of opera spread over four long evenings. This is the ultimate cultural marathon.
After its run in Stratford, Guardian’s Michael Billington hailed this cycle as ‘one of the great events of modern theatre’. After seeing it all in London, I’m here to second that. As each segment unfolds, you develop a strong sense of privilege merely to be present.
To catch the odd ones as you can fit them into your busy life would not do the business at all. To see all eight in chronological order, is to be blown away by the determinist panorama he built over a dozen years of his own life (amid as many other plays), covering 100 turbulent years of English history in one breathtaking octology.
Some think Shakespeare was looking back nostalgically to an age when men were men and chivalry just that, as compared to the foppery of his own Elizabethan court; others take the opposite view, that he is extolling the virtues of dynamic, progressive Elizabethan England as against the civil slaughter that had so recently, and for so long, bedevilled his beloved homeland. I prefer to think of him as our supreme actor-poet-playwright, reliving recent history because its such a rattling good yarn, packed with great parts, bound to break all box-office records.
As indeed, it did and still is doing 400 years later. The brilliance of Michael Boyd’s production lies in the same sleek ensemble acting that characterised Shakespeare’s company. Boyd’s versatile actors play multiple roles, as did those for whom they were first written. In the process, they bond like some vast extended family, raising one another’s games.
Over two stretches of 30 hours each (of real life that is, this time including intervals), you lose track of the body-count as England tears itself apart during the Wars of the Roses. Richard II is a louche, dysfunctional monarch, whose usurpation by Bolingbrook (Henry IV) disrupts the divine order. This haunts the entire cycle, with his son Hal, now Henry V, praying on the eve of Agincourt that God not choose today of all days to extract the inevitable come-uppance. Even as he passes on the hollow crown to infant Henry VI, whose adult self remains largely a spectator as his nobles wrangle over the succession, the unlikely figure of hunchback Duke of Gloucester is already planning to ice his brothers, as well as the princes in the Tower, en route to the role he really covets, Richard III.
There are times it all resembles a superior, Shakespearean Sopranos. The profusion of severed heads, furtive stabbings, litres (literally) of stage blood, punctuated by much power-whispering in posh corners, also evokes potent parallels with our time, from war in Iraq via back stabbing in corridors of power to the mini-Falstaff’s partying with our fun-loving Prince Harry. There are still real-life Dukes of York, Gloucester etc knocking around too, as if to say, hey plus ca change.
Recurrent ghosts, aerial acrobatics, devils in basements and wondrous set pieces – the shower of dust, for instance that rains down on Richard II and his successors – keep us all on red alert as the panoramic parade roars by. At its end, we are suddenly in modern dress, with Richmond’s heavies training machine guns on us as he promises post – civil war peace.
Apart from Warner, there are no stars to unbalance this energised ensemble, but some have certainly been born. Thrilling careers surely lie ahead for Jonathan Slinger (a fabulous Llewellyn, as well as Richard II and III), Geoffrey Streatfield (a simmering Suffolk as well as a Hal / Henry V), John Mackay (a manic Jack Cade as well as a hysterically camp Dauphin), Lex Shapnell (seven sizzling parts from Hotspur to Richmond), Katy Stephens (a sexy Joan of Arc / Margaret) and Alexia Healy (Ditto Doll Tearsheet / Katherine).
This is also the finest hour of such nonparail company layers as Nicholas Asbury, Keith Bartlett, Maureen Beattie, Richard Cordery, Geoffrey Freshwater, Miles Richardson, Roger Watkins, and Clive Wood.
If you can snag a seat, you can see the whole cycle between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon. Then, a week from today, it will be over. Boyd’s company is aware that, more than most, it will suffer acute withdrawal symptoms. They have grown into a close-knit clan, 34 people playing 264 parts, al nurturing one another like members of some remote, self-supporting tribe. As for the audience, well, some of us will miss one another, too, but at least we will always be able to say of this once-in-a-lifetime theatrical adventure:
‘I was there’ Anthony Holden The Guardian 2008
‘The music was exquisite – the voice of Sianed Jones hovering ominously over tonal percussion’ Miranda Rose Daily Info Oxford
‘The haunting voice of Sianed Jones echoed around the auditorium’
Sandy Holt Stratford Herald
Henry IV Part 1
‘A million miles from the Ale House atmosphere, Sianed Jones as Lady Mortimer, sang a haunting Welsh song of her own composition it was so beautiful. And the musicians, as ever at the RSC, play a vital role in pointing up the required mood’. Don Fathers Theatre world Internet Magazine