by William Shakespeare
seen at the Barbican on 14 January 2016 (afternoon) as part three of 'King & Country'
This revival of the RSC's 2014 production is directed by Gregory Doran and designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis with music by Paul Englishby. It features Jasper Britton as King Henry IV, Alex Hassell as Prince Hal, Anthony Sher as Falstaff, Sam Marks as Ned Poins, and Oliver Ford Davies as Justice Shallow. As part of the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, it is being presented with Richard II, Henry IV Part One and Henry V as a sequence entitled 'King & Country'.
Considering that the play has a very similar structural pattern to that of Henry IV Part One it is striking how different the tone is. The prolonged 'Eastsheap' scene with Doll Tearsheet (Emma King) and Mistress Quickly (Sarah Parks, played with a distractingly broad accent) seems more hectic, and Falstaff here even more selfish, while the king is far weaker physically, and the scenes between Falstaff and Justice Shallow, the erstwhile companion of his youth, are tinged with a melancholy regret for the passage of time (these have no direct parallel in the earlier play). In the meantime Prince Hal is brought to realise that slumming it with the likes of Ned Poins is by no means a meeting of equals, while his relationship with his father barely survives a deathbed misunderstanding.
