55 Days, Hampstead Theatre, NW3 - review

 
31 October 2012

The idea of Mark Gatiss as King Charles the First is certainly seductive. And the magnetic star of Sherlock and The League of Gentlemen, here with flowing locks and elaborate lace collar, doesn’t disappoint.

Alongside him, as Oliver Cromwell, Douglas Henshall is all steely charisma. The strongest scene in Howard Brenton’s new history play is a purely fictional one in which the two leads are alone: the tension between the unpopular monarch and his ambitious antagonist is palpable.

The rest of the time this confident and idea-packed piece is watchable without being highly charged. The 55 days of its title stretch from the creation of the so-called Rump Parliament – republican survivors of Colonel Pride’s famous ‘purge’ – and the execution (some would say martyrdom) of Charles. Brenton captures the age’s religious and political turbulence in a script that strikes a balance between complexity and narrative clarity.

Charles is the only character dressed in the costume of the period, and his appearance is majestic: he mentions putting on three shirts to keep the cold out, and there’s a sense of flamboyant disdain in all that he does. Everyone else wears modern or nearly modern dress, which emphasises Charles’s isolation and the other characters’ distance from the pompous tradition he embodies.

Gatiss does a nice job of conveying the king’s affectations. He’s an intransigent figure, convinced that he is on the throne because God has ordained it. Gatiss imbues him with regal arrogance and tartness. His accent here has a noticeably Scottish tinge – which is historically accurate. Meanwhile Henshall’s Cromwell, always keenly focused on his objectives, speaks with clipped precision.

For both, language is a magical instrument. In the end it is Cromwell’s terseness that impresses more, as when he says, ‘We are not just trying a tyrant, we are inventing a country.’

This is a play about the human cost of attempting to change the world. It could have been a dour history lesson. Instead it engages with the present, raising some pungent questions about the kind of democracy we have in Britain today. But there’s still a good deal of slow-moving exposition, and Howard Davies’s intelligent production is a rather austere experience, especially in its dense first half.

Until November 24 (020 7722 9301, hampsteadtheatre.com)

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