Donmar

Henry IV adapted from Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 (seen November 6)

This is the second production of Shakespeare at the Donmar by the director Phyllida Lloyd with actor Harriet Walter, in which the entire cast is played by women, the first being Julius Caesar in 2012/13 (in which Walter played Brutus).

Both productions were set, as a framing device, in a women’s prison, with prisoners taking all the roles in the play, and with the occasional disruption of ‘real’ life interrupting the play being performed – disruptions caused by over-enthusiastic playing, or by rivalries between prisoners, or by the guards imposing a lock-down. In Henry IV the prison theme was extended by having the whole theatre space imagined as a prison, with official prison security notices everywhere (even in the lighting box), and by having the audience escorted into the theatre site via the fire escape stairs rather than through the normal foyer. All the front of house staff were dressed as prison warders, and the stalls theatre seats were all removed and replaced by (uncomfortable) plastic chairs, while harsh neon lighting replaced the normal house lights.

The cast was marched in and after a brief flurry of elation from one of them who was soon to leave the prison, they immediately began the play. The whole piece was startlingly effective, with brilliant performances by Walter as King Henry IV, Clare Dunne as Prince Hal, Jade Anouka as Hotspur and Ashley McGuire as Falstaff – but all the supporting roles were equally excellent, not least Sharon Rooney as an affecting Lady Hotspur. The ‘issue’ of an all-female cast was no issue at all – surely the whole point of the exercise – and the production was superb.

The play was mostly taken from Part One, with only Northumberland’s grief, the great deathbed scene, and the rejection of Falstaff taken from Part Two, and it was performed without an interval for just over two hours. It was extraordinary how much of the essence of four or five hours’ worth of text was transmitted in this time, and very interesting to compare the abridgements with those used in the BBC’s 2012 The Hollow Crown, which devoted two two-hour episodes to the plays. At the Donmar there was no Doll Tearsheet, no Justices Shallow or Silence, no brothers to Prince Hal – but there were some speeches and episodes that received fuller treatment even though there was less time available.