Henry V

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 10 March 2022

Kit Harington plays the King with a supporting cast of fourteen taking all the other roles in Max Webster's production of Henry V, designed by Fly Davis. On a bare stage of four marbled tiers or steps, with a featureless metallic wall at the back which occasionally splits apart in the form of a St George's Cross, the career of the hero king from wastrel prince to victorious military leader is played out with sobering attention to the darker side of his progress.

After the famous Prologue apologising for the paucity of stage effects when dealing with such weighty military and political actions, the low expectations of the new king's character are underscored by the interpolation of part of the first tavern scene between Prince Hal and Falstaff from Henry IV Part One, and the crushing rejection of the latter by the former from Henry IV Part Two. Only then are we presented with Hal's full transformation into King Henry as he listens to the Archbishop of Canterbury's interminable lecture about the Salic Law in France (or properly belonging somewhere further east, as the case may be), its tediousness underlined by a confusing Powerpoint presentation projected onto the back wall. The Dauphin's insulting gift of tennis balls does far more to kindle the King's ire and to convince him to invade France to claim his right to the kingdom.

The play veers beween high politics and the less glamorous life of the ordinary soldiers. Indeed, some of the named infantry were once Prince Hal's tavern friends, and two of them come to a bad end, Bardolph in particular singled out for a judicial hanging which the King watches with apparent impassivity. For this production, which is in modern dress, movement director Benoit Swan Pouffer brought in Tom Leigh, a former Royal Marines Commando, to teach the cast basic military drill and to discuss with them the often traumatic impact of combat. The result can be seen in the intimidating manoeuvres on stage, but also in the pained reactions to some events (in particular the order to kill all the French prisoners at Agincourt, which is brutally performed onstage) and in the wild partying following the battle.

All this helps to sharpen the contrast between the high flown rhetoric of the famous speeches, which are wonderfully delivered by Kit Harington, and the sordid reality of close combat. The mutual incomprehension of the two sides (English and French) is emphasised by having the French characters speak French among themselves, with English translations provided on a screen. This cleverly extends the device used in the scene with Princess Katharine as she struggles to learn English, which is often played for laughs. Here, it is not a matter for laughter, and later the Princess has a decidedly unromantic encounter with the King whose plain-speaking wooing is not the bumbling effort of a stranger to flirting (as he suggests), but rather nothing more than a steely determination to consolidate a business deal no matter what the Princess thinks.

Indeed several scenes often used to lighten the tone here receive a more sober and disturbing turn. Captain Fluellen, usually portrayed as an amusing pedant, is here more of an obsessive, and his baiting of Pistol, forcing him to eat a leek, is is an exercise in sadistic bullying. Luckily for the hapless soldier Williams, who had unwittingly wagered to box the King's ear (not knowing who he was talking to before the battle), the scene in which the King asks Fluellen to bear the exchanged glove was omitted: this Fluellen would probably have shot Williams out of hand. Instead the King and Williams resolve the matter directly without the intervening 'joke'. Everyone is clearly very skittish after the victory; the atmosphere is credibly febrile and the King himself erupts in brittle laughter when he is presented with the account of the slain.

It was inevitable that the play would resonate with the current crisis in Ukraine. 'Once more unto the breach' is the rallying cry of a leader besieging an enemy town, and the King's later threats to the governor of Harfleur are a chilling reminder of what a victorious army can do to a town that did not surrender. It is not possible in view of the shelled urban areas in Ukraine to shrug this off as an example of medieval babarity which the modern world has outgrown. By contrast the great St Crispin's Day speech is the exhortaton of a leader in the face of overwhelming odds (a fact perhaps obscured by the unexpected outcome of the Agincourt battle). This too has its parallel in the events unfolding; the outcome is not yet known. 

In frank acknowledgement of the uneasy parallels between art and life, Kit Harington interrupted the audience applause at the end of the play to explain that there would be a retiring collection for the Red Cross, to which we were invited to contribute. It was generously supported.