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Review of Shakespeare's Henry V (directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 28 September 2015

The Prologue toHenry V stresses the role of the audience’s imagination in creating a dramatic world, asking them to “let us...On your imaginary forces work” (17–18). Gregory Doran chose to remain faithful to the words of the Chorus, offering a performance which provided few visual cues such as sets to fashion King Harry’s world for the audience’s eye, but made ample use of what setting and costume it did provide to create a context for his interpretation of the drama. However, in their minimalism, the sometimes modern dress and sparse setting drew attention to how the narrative might be told as a series of historical events and how it might be envisioned as enacted or constructed on stage and perceived in the spectator’s mind. The performance itself, and the actors’ methods of communicating characterization, in particular, highlighted the degree to which any individual performance is itself an interpretation, one of several possible impressions of figures such as Henry that are made available through the language they utter. The opening comments of the Prologue remained true to the text, delivered by a Chorus (Oliver Ford Davies) who was dressed as an aged stage actor or professor in khaki pants, white shirt, red cardigan, and matching scarf, his white hair complementing his grandfather-like appearance. His was a lone figure, and apparently intended to be viewed as contemporary, set against a backdrop that appeared to recreate the backstage of a theatre with costumes of armour neatly hung and ladders awaiting use, which noticeably called the spectator’s attention to the theatricality of the play. His appearance and dramatic voice were in keeping with the Prologue’s stress on the limitations of “this unworthy scaffold” (10) in offering a realistic depiction of events, and on the role of the audience in bringing proposed spectacle to life. He framed a performance where actors repeatedly fixed the audience’s attention on aspects of their rendering of the characters, and in so doing, the extent to which history is a reconstruction of the distant past and depends on the perspective of the storyteller or player. However, his mannerisms and speech were set up in stark contrast to the characterization of King Harry that followed. In the early scenes of the play, Harry (Alex Hassell) appeared to be very much a young king who had yet to mature from the brashness and vanity of his youth. Although not depicted as engaging in drunken exploits, his tone and mannerisms suggested a hot-headed adolescent with little regard but for his pursuit of ambition. When angered that his three vassals Cambridge (Simon Yadoo), Scrope (Keith Osborne) and Grey (Obioma Ugoala) would dare commit treason, plotting to murder him in exchange for the favours of the French, he resorted to yelling and literally beating Grey in a venting of his anger. The discontinuity between this anger and the language of King Harry’s speech, which expresses a sense of righteousness in the King’s position, lent the words a certain irony: he seemed not quite ignoble, but not quite the hand of justice either, avenging a personal grievance rather than addressing a crime. The noticeable difference between this and his tone and demeanour of affected graveness at Harfleur, in offering what sounded more like a subtle warning of what would ensue