The Wars of the Roses

by William Shakespeare adapted by John Barton and Peter Hall

seen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames on 29 October 2015

In 1962 John Barton and Peter Hall devised three plays they called 'Henry VI', 'Edward IV' and 'Richard III' from Shakespeare's original 'Henry VI' Parts 1, 2 and 3, and 'Richard III'. Presented under the overall title 'The Wars of the Roses', this was a major success for the then-new Royal Shakespeare Company, but the adaptations have rarely been performed since. Trevor Nunn saw the original productions as an undergraduate, and they inspired his vocation as a theatre director - he later followed Peter Hall as artistic director of both the RSC and the National Theatre. Peter Hall was also the founding patron of the Rose Theatre, and so Trevor Nunn has revived the trilogy here as a tribute to his mentor.

This production features Alex Waldmann as Henry VI, Joely Richardson as his queen Margaret of Anjou, Kåre Conradi as Edward IV, Alexandra Gilbreath as his queen Elizabeth, Robert Sheehan as Richard of Gloucester (later Richard III) and Alexander Hanson as Richard Plantagenet the Duke of York. The many other speaking parts are shared between these and sixteen other actors, some young boys and a 'company community chorus' of sixteen more assorted soldiers and peasants. The set was designed by John Napier and Mark Friend.

The Henry VI plays are packed with incident and an unwieldy amount of not always accurate historical narrative. They are early plays in Shakespeare's career - indeed it is thought by many that Part 1 was a collaborative effort. Hall and Barton felt, with some justification, that they could conveniently be reduced from three plays to two by pruning scenes and characters in order to highlight the overall theme of the increasingly ruthless and destructive rivalry between various branches of the Plantagenet royal house. Also, the story reaches its natural climax in 'Richard III', and having only three plays (instead of four) to tell this story makes it possible to stage them all in one day - not every day, of course, as this would be too draining for the cast, but on a number of days during the run.

Does the trilogy work? On many levels, yes. The first half of the first play shows the resurgence of French power under the inspiration of Joan of Arc, and the weakness of England's position as fractious rivalry in the Council of State fatally undermines the military experts led by Sir John Talbot in France. The domestic rivalry is symbolised by the famous selection of red roses or white to show support for different factions. But Joan's death does not guarantee English success, especially as Talbot and his son have both been killed. In the second half, and then throughout the remaining two plays, the action is confined almost entirely to England as the domestic situation worsens. The young king is persuaded into an ill-advised marriage, his conscientious uncle and Lord Protector is outmanouevred and ruined, and the queen's favourite is butchered by a mob. 

In 'Edward IV' we see the eventual triumph of the Yorkist cause, even though Rutland, the youngest son of the Duke, and the Duke himself, lose their lives in the process. King Henry, at first a timorous and rather otherworldly teenager with occasional outbursts of petulant temper, becomes increasingly melancholy while his wife develops a more ruthless and martial spirit manifested finally in a ghastly gloating over Richard Duke of York. York's three surviving sons seem invincible, though the youngest, Richard of Gloucester, is already marked out as one to watch for trouble. He has no trouble in arranging to murder Henry VI when it suits him.

The final play, more or less presented in its familiar form, shows the later career of Richard as he murders his way to the throne and then continues executing supporters whom he no longer trusts. A trio of bereaved women - Margaret the widow of Henry VI, the widowed Duchess of York, and Elizabeth the widow of Edward IV and mother to the murdered Princes in the Tower - make common cause to curse the new king; prior to the decisive battle at Bosworth Field the ghosts of Richard's victims appear in his dreams to curse him, and in Henry Tudor's dreams to bless him. Richard is vanquished but the new king proclaims the end of the Wars of the Roses by conjoining the two factions in his marriage with the daughter of Edward IV. The picture of the unbridled villainy of Richard is perhaps tempered by the chance to see his earlier career as an eager young man fervently loyal to his father (he is the only one to support him in his final hours).

The drawback to all this history is that it might become indigestible, the arguments irrelevant, the titles of the nobility interchangeable, and the deaths of established characters and appearance of newcomers confusing. This production avoids almost all these pitfalls by strong characterisation, distinctive costumes, and driving energy. Perhaps the weakest feature is the battle scenes, which do appear undifferentiated, usually managed by slow motion sword play under strobe lighting until there is a duel to the death to which we must attend. This technical solution to a tricky staging problem neither gave the impression that each battle was different, nor that there was some overriding vision of the futility of it all: it just looked rather uninspired.

The major actors were extremely good. Alex Waldmann's King Henry was no shrinking ascetic, but rather an insecure youngster allowing himself to be overruled by his seniors up to a certain point, but then flaring with a wholly unexpected but completely believable temper tantrum. Unfortunately he cannot manage his wife, who in Joely Richardson's fine portrayal develops a commanding stature with nothing but withering scorn for her hapless husband. Yet in her political and military actions, she shows an ungovernable self-indulgence which allows her enemies to wound her grievously; her appearance in 'Richard III' as a crone-like fury shows the depth of her suffering, but with no awareness of her failings. (It is, of course, not to the point to investigate her character development in this play, as her function is to speak magnificent curses against the king.) 

Alexander Hanson provided the perfect foil to both these characters as Richard Duke of York - personally ambitious and frustrated by the factions, genial with his sons and finally distraught with grief as his world crumbles about him. Later, he gave a fabulously different turn as a smooth, not to say unctuous, Duke of Buckingham brought eventually to ruin by Richard III.

Kåre Conradi, having been a sensual Dauphin to Joan of Arc's plainspoken peasant girl, revels in portraying a king who indulges his appetites at the expense of diplomatic prudence, thus fatefully alienating both his strongest ally (Warwick 'the Kingmaker', an sterling Timothy Walker) and - even more riskily, because the danger is hidden - his brother Richard. The superficial glamour of the Edwardian court proves all too transitory when the lynchpin sickens and dies.

Robert Sheehan's Richard is a fascinating study. Darkly handsome with black curly hair, but with a pronounced hump and a useless right arm in a sling, and a cruelly twisted right foot in a built up boot, he was still engaging rather than melodramatic, in a performance of extraordinary energy and dangerous charm. He was plausible to himself and hence curiously plausible to us. Perhaps the ultimate sense of totalitarian madness was missing from the picture as the executions mounted; but perhaps this was partly a function of having seen so much mayhem caused by others earlier.

All in all, an engrossing day, amazingly with no longeurs despite covering sixty years of gruelling civil strife. I recall that the television version of the original production emphasised the gruesome deaths with hideous broadswords and gruesome fights or murders. At the Rose, there was no blood and the swords were lighter, leading to more agile at times almost swashbuckling fights. The severed heads were contained in bags, again reducing the horror, though the onstage decapitations were well choreographed. This reflected the overall impression that this was a less visceral affair than it might have been.