Henry VI must have been one of the weediest kings ever to have sat on the throne of England. Those authorities Sellar and Yeatman, authors of 1066 and All That, explain he “was only one year old and thus rather a Weak King”, while his chaplain recorded that a Christmas show put on for him by one noble lord, featuring bare-breasted dancing girls, had him running out of the room wailing “Fy, fy forsooth for shame yet be to blame”, whatever that means.
Sadly, Shakespeare doesn’t include this delightful scene in his epic trilogy, but he does make a great job of producing powerful drama out of a colourless protagonist. Action-packed and turbulent, violent and cynical, with at least three terrific villains, the plays are brought to vibrant stage life by Michael Boyd and an exceptional cast, confirming that the RSC, with its Complete Works, is having one of its greatest seasons ever.
Black-clad soldiers swoop down on ropes like SAS men paying a visit to the Iranian embassy, the sword fights are clashing and gory, the body count is higher than in a John Woo movie, and sometimes those slain are left dangling gruesomely overhead. Since this is the Wars of the Roses, with gangs of unpleasant aristos forever at each other’s throats, it’s not easy to take sides: rather like watching a debate between Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway, you find yourself wishing that both could lose.
Yet Shakespeare does produce some sympathetic characters, if not exactly heroes, out of this mutilated mess. There’s Keith Bartlett as Lord Talbot, the sturdily patriotic soldier in Part One, The War Against France, and good old Duke Humphrey, memorably played by Richard Cordery. Henry VI (Chuk Iwuji) is a more complex figure than the pious little swot of history: a wide-eyed, trusting non-leader “whose bookish rule hath pulled fair England down”. A good man, but, ipso facto, not a good king. By Part Three, The Chaos, having spent so long looking like a frightened rabbit, he begins to appear stronger by virtue of his despair, overwhelmed with pity for the idiots around him, weltering in this bloody and meaningless civil war.
Clive Wood is the dominant villain of Part Two, as Richard Plantagenet, the Duke of York. Also in Part Two, we have John Hume, the fantastically creepy priest, played by Jonathan Slinger. But Slinger emerges even more villainous — mesmerisingly so — as that Crouchback, Richard III-to-be, conniving, sneering and raging in devastating soliloquies howled out to a stunned audience, barely able to breathe as he rants and raves. I saw all three plays in one day, more than nine hours of numb bum, yet I would happily have gone straight on to see Slinger in Richard III.
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Geoffrey Streatfeild makes a tremendously unlikeable villain as the Duke of Suffolk (whereas you can’t help liking Crouchback, for all his little faults, multiple stabbings, child murders and so on). Katy Stephens is also excellent, first as Joan of Arc, all serene, humourless, fanatical smiles, then as Margaret, the scheming queen to Henry VI. It helps that she looks like Lauren Bacall from a distance when she sulks. And John Mackay makes a flamboyant Jack Cade, as well as getting some good laughs as the French Dauphin, with cascading blond ringlets, gold necklaces, pearly earrings, a girlie white blouse and purple pantaloons. Good to see that portraying the French as poncey overdressers delights a 21st-century audience as much as it must have done the Elizabethan groundlings.
You might have reservations about the stage opening to show the pit of hell below. It’s fair to remind us that for people then, and the Elizabethans, hell was a physical reality, beneath your feet. But to our eyes, it looks pantomime.
As for the plays, they are noticeably short on humour. Shakespeare hadn’t yet found the trick of chucking in daft jokes at the most harrowing and inappropriate moments, only to enrich the mix. And there are entire scenes that consist simply of a lot of fat, self-seeking, middle-aged men shouting at each other — a bit like the House of Commons nowadays, really. But these last two points are faults of the plays, not the production, which at its best is a breathlessly pell-mell, swaggeringly epic dose of theatre.
Henry VI, Parts One, Two and Three Courtyard, Stratford
Four stars