This isn’t so much Shakespeare’s Henry V as a package of edited highlights, a cheeky remix in which the invigorating story of Agincourt is reconceived as a life-size board game.
The inspirations here appear to be Henry’s penchant for playfulness and the image conjured by Shakespeare’s Chorus of armed combat as ‘brawl ridiculous’. Director Emily Lim’s interpretation is artful, imagining the drama of the battlefield as a punctiliously choreographed dance.
The actors, whose commitment is clear although in several cases their diction is not, wear shorts, plimsolls, knee socks and tabards blazoned with the names of their characters. They even have bum bags in which to store other tabards; everyone apart from Tom Greaves, who plays Henry as a kind of affable volleyball champ, has to personify between two and six characters. There are moments when the stylized movement owes something to The Matrix. Yet when the kinetic gestures stop, the decision to abridge the text so radically begins to seem problematic. Characterization has been stripped back, and the storytelling is fitful and skimpy, with the result that this politically charged history play becomes something more like It’s a Knockout.
The scenes that exploit the linguistic differences between England and France are nicely conceived, and the originality of approach is bold. But the production feels lightweight and lacks subtlety. Strangely, too, the scope for interaction with the audience, which at first looks to be its raison d’être, is never fruitfully exploited.
Until 20 March. Information: 020
Henry V
Southwark Playhouse
Shipwright Yard, corner of Tooley Street and Bermondsey Street, SE1 2TF
