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Director
Nicholas
Hytner
Designer
Mark
Thompson
Sound
Designer
Paul
Groothuis
Music/
Soundscore
Max
Ringham
Ben Ringham
Andrew Rutland
Musicians
The
InKlein Quartet
King
Henry IV/
Bolingbroke
David Bradley
Harry
(Hal)/
Prince of Wales
Matthew Macfadyen
Prince
John of Lancaster
Samuel Roukin
Humphrey,
Duke of Gloucester
Thomas Arnold
Thomas
Duke of Clarence
Rupert Ward-Lewis
Earl
of Westmorland
Elliot Levey
Henry
Percy,
Earl of Northumberland
Jeffrey Kissoon
Lady
Percy (Kate)
Naomi Frederick
Lord
Mowbray
Thomas Arnold
Lord
Hastings/
Beadle
Robert Lister
Sir
John Coleville/
Fang/
Peter Bullcalf
Harry Peacock
Travers/Peto
Andrew Westfield
Morton/Davy
Ian Gelder
Sir
John Falstaff
Michael Gambon
Falstaff's
Page
Danny Worters
Mistress
Quickly
Susan Brown
Bardolph
Roger Sloman
Ned
Poins/
Justice Silence
Adrian Scarborough
Doll
Tearsheet
Eve Myles
Pistol/
Ralph Mouldy
Alastair
Petrie
Peto
Andrew Westfield
Francis/
Thomas Wart
Darren Hart
Justice
Shallow
John Wood
Simon
Shadow
Michelle
Dockery
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National Theatre
13
July - 31 August 2005 |
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The biggest
problem to be confronted when
staging the second part of
Henry
IV
is the contrast with part
one. Gone are Hotspur and
the crackling wit between
Prince Harry and his Eastcheap
friends. Instead, there enters
a more sombre note, as if
a bank of dark cloud hangs
oppressively overhead. Without
much relief in wit and action,
scenes can congeal and drag.
There are, however, scenes
in part two that are dramatically
stronger than those in part
one: the scene between Doll
Tearsheet and Falstaff, or
Harry's appearance before
his dying father, not least
Harry's renunciation of Falstaff
and all his former friends.
These will stand out in any
production, but Hytner here
relies upon them too heavily
to pull the action along.
This makes for a clunky and
unequal theatrical experience,
where one moment the audience
is fully engaged, the next
moment rustling and fidgeting.
After the flashing sword-fights
and heightening tension of
part one, it seems naîve
for a director not to anticipate
adjustments to be made by
the audience, and not to mitigate
the effects of the slower
scenes.
Hytner is, however, lucky
enough to have a cast of talented
actors who can pull it off
for him. They make the strong
scenes stronger and therefore
brilliantly memorable. Needless
to say, the star turn is Michael
Gambon's Falstaff who, with
more to do in part two, becomes
the centrepiece Hytner always
intended him to be. Suddenly,
the range and depth of Gambon's
talent is allowed full expression
and he is Jack Falstaff right
to the end of his magnificently
long and knarled fingers.
Unlike part one, he has more
to do than be the embodiment
of Merry England, and the
way in which he welcomes Harry
when the latter makes an appearance
in Eastcheap dropping his
head on Harry's shoulder,
breaking into tears, and uttering
a muffled, relieved "Thou
art most welcome" gives
this performance one of its
more poignant moments. The
eloquence of Gambon's physicality,
which in part one was only
extended to his hand gestures,
now carries all the emotional
impact when Harry comes to
banish Falstaff. Gambon is
the very picture of dejection:
shoulders rounded in his tatty
green coat, head hanging.
His face need not be visible
for an audience to know he
is crying, and to cry in sympathy
with him.
Strong performances were given
all round, from Matthew MacFadyen
as Harry, whose eyebrows and
lips expressed every uncertain
emotion surrounding his responsibility
to the crown, to Eve Myles
as Doll Tearsheet, her head
lolling like a balloon on
a stick in an enormous blond
wig. Alastair Petrie seemed
to base his performance of
Pistol on Johhny Depp's Captain
Jack Sparrow, hammed-up to
just the right degree. Indeed,
the comic scenes worked only
when they were hammy, best
exemplified by Adrian Scarborough
as Justice Silence whose ėdrunk-acting'
raised the biggest laugh of
the evening. Upstaging Falstaff's
role as the comic-relief was
entirely necessary in order
to allow an audience to accept
a Falstaff's move beyond that
role, and without Scarborough's
performance this might not
have come off. That so many
cheap, but effective, gags
were thrown into this scene
signals that Hytner was aware
of this pitfall. The only
problem being that Falstaff
had one more scene to play
out as ėcomic-relief', meaning
that when he came on stage
after an emotionally heavy
scene, the immediate impression
was that ėrelief' no longer
came so easily, and again,
the pace dragged.
If anything more can be added
to what has already been said
of the set for part one, it
is simply that the grey monotones
are better suited to the atmosphere
of part two. At times though
it seemed to wash out the
action on-stage entirely,
exacerbated by the overwhelmingly
grey costumes of part two.
Once again, the area seemed
cluttered by props that laboured
far more than was necessary,
and subsequently never attained
its full potential as a dramatic
space.
The greatest loss of dramatic
effect came through not using
the very front of the stage
enough. At only one point
Falstaff's speech in praise
of sack (sherry) did an
actor come right out to meet
the audience. It was as if
Hytner intended this production
to be very filmic (a black
and white film at that), and
removed. At times a screen
seemed to exist between audience
and actors. The sense that
this was cinema rather than
theatre was heightened by
the use of music and sound-effects
such as barking dogs, birdsong
and church bells, and the
too-fast set changes that
took the place of quick edits
in film. Whilst this technique
has worked for Hytner in the
past, it fits uneasily with
a writer such as Shakespeare,
who was always aware that
theatre was the medium in
which he worked. Certainly,
very effective film-versions
of Shakespeare (one need only
think of Henry
V,
for example) have been made,
but this production is in
the grip of an existential
crisis, unsure as to whether
it is film or theatre. It
seems to work best only when
the actors assembled on stage
play it as pure theatre.
Laura Keynes |
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