Shakespeare's Henry V
RSC Courtyard Theatre Production, Stratford-upon-Avon
A review of the current production of Henry V at the RSC's Courtyard Theatre, starring Geoffrey Streatfeild as the King, and directed by Michael Boyd.
It's been a long, very exciting, and very exhausting couple of seasons for the Royal Shakespeare Company, not least because they've had to get used to the temporary – and rather wonderful – Courtyard Theatre (just along from the Dirty Duck pub), while Elizabeth Scott's Royal Shakespeare Theatre (completed in 1932) is partially demolished to make room for a new theatre (to be completed in 2010), but also because the company has spent the last couple of years rehearsing and putting on the whole of Shakespeare's cycle of so called History Plays; and that's enough to exhaust anyone – performer and audience.
Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2
Of course, you can't have Henry V without Henry IV, parts 1 & 2, which are wonderfully wordy plays, with Part 2 outstripping Part 1 in its ironic and brutal use of rhyming verse, which Shakespeare had previously kept as the language of love and lovers. This juggling, this turning of the music of language upon its head is a perfect way to establish, and prepare the audience, for the bloody and beautiful Henry V. In this third play we see a young and inexperienced king intent upon establishing and building a new power base outside that of his existing kingdom, a kingdom his father, Henry Bolingbroke ( played brilliantly by Clive Wood), had so skilfully taken from a weak and ailing King Richard II.
Richard II
And you can't have Henry V without Richard II, and the production of that massive, hard play – which has run alongside Henry V for the last few weeks – was an extraordinary piece of work that has established Jonathan Slinger as one of the finest actors of his generation.
Exhaustion
But it did seem that exhaustion may have set with the first half a slow, lacklustre affair that had little or no determination to succeed, or even reach the interval, and could have filled many a breach with a bored audience.
Not so after the interval when Geoffrey Streatfeild took the play by the neck and shook it so hard that a coughing audience were compelled to silence and the company propelled to some of the finest acting ever seen, anywhere.
Geoffrey Streatfeild is Henry V
All of a sudden the audience believed in this king, wanted to follow him, be with him on St. Crispin's Day. The play was no longer theatre, was no longer Shakespeare – it had become life, and the meaning of life. It was real, if only for 90 minutes of the three-and-a-half hours. It was enough to earn Streatfeild and the rest of the company a well deserved standing ovation. They had, like King Henry V himself, pulled victory from a looming defeat.
Like Jonathan Slinger, Geoffrey Streatfeild is an actor of immense talent. You will hear a lot of them in the future.
Wonderfully Supported
Of Course the stars of any show would be as nothing without the rest of the cast ( the philosophy of the RSC is still based around ensemble acting), and the rest of the cast in this cycle of plays has been pretty constant, with such names as Richard Cordery, Julius D'Silva, Forbes Mason, Miles Richardson, Lex Shrapnel, Anthony Bunsee, Maureen Beattie, and the superb Geoffrey Freshwater, a joy to behold.
