Theatre review: Player Kings

A few years ago in his one-man show, Ian McKellen answered a question about Falstaff by saying that he'd always wanted to play the character until he saw Roger Allam play him at the Globe. Like many people he considered the performance definitive, and decided there was no point him tackling the role because there was nothing he could add to it. I wonder if the fact that he spent much of last year performing with Allam has anything to do with him changing his mind and, after years of turning it down, accepting Robert Icke's offer to join Player Kings, Icke's compressed version of both of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. Falstaff is, at least as far as he's presented at the start of the show, something of an East End gangster, comparatively affable as far as crime bosses go but still involved with planning and, despite his advanced years and increasing waistline, carrying out robberies that can easily turn violent.

What's particularly unusual about his gang though is that one of the members is the future king of England: Hal (Toheeb Jimoh) is the future Henry V, and his father Henry IV (Richard Coyle) fears for the future of the country when he dies and power comes into the hands of someone who appears to be wayward and care only about his own pleasure.

But Hal assures the audience early on that he has a plan: These are his wilderness years, going crazy in in his youth so that he can know the people he's going to rule over; it's also a PR move, knowing that if expectations are low, he'll get even more popular support when he exceeds them. And popular support is important, because Henry IV came to the throne by deposing the previous king, and is well aware that the same can happen to him. In fact there's a rebellion bubbling in the background, led by various lords but with the fiery Hotspur (Samuel Edward-Cook) as its figurehead.

Icke's edit of the text obviously has to compress a lot to make what would normally be two three-hour plays into something more manageable (still coming in at nearly four,) so inevitably a lot of elements have been trimmed or excised completely, including the entire Welsh contingent (maybe that's why the tour won't be taking in Cardiff.) But unlike some combined versions it places almost equal weight on both parts - Part I remains the longest, with a full two hours up to the interval, but although shorter we still get the second half focused on the moodier Part II, which covers the aftermath of the rebellion and the king's ailing health.

And it's in Part II, generally considered the less popular of the two, that Icke seems more confident in how everything is meant to come together. In the first act I enjoyed a lot of individual elements, happily including the two leads: McKellen is a more tired, browbeaten and grumpy Falstaff than most, but if his comic lines come across drier than usual that doesn't make them any less funny. Jimoh makes you believe Hal's claims that this is all part of a greater plan - although he enjoys his time with Poins (understudy Henry Jenkinson) there's a weariness to him in many of the tavern scenes with the rest of the gang, as if he's past the point where he genuinely enjoyed this and is now biding his time until he can reveal who he really is.

What there isn't is any sense of warmth between the two characters: They're both fairly openly using each other for their own aims, it's just that Hal understands this better than Falstaff does. I'm not normally bothered about productions not playing up the surrogate father/son relationship because it's become a cliché, but where it's a shame here is that one of the best-drawn arcs is that of Hal's relationship with the Lord Chief Justice (Joseph Mydell,) who goes from nemesis to chosen father figure, so it's a bit of a shame we don't get this presented as a clearer contrast.

And for someone who's usually got a very sharp idea of what he wants to portray, Icke is surprisingly clumsy in his attempts to show the darker side to the central pair: Although neither of them are the fluffiest iterations of these characters you'll ever see, the initial robbery ending with a dead security guard in a pool of blod, and particularly the change to the way Hal eventually kills Hotspur (drawing audible audience gasps) feel like they're shock tactics that don't quite gel with the rest of the show.

For Icke this production also feels comparatively traditional - maybe a few years in Amsterdan have left him all avant-garded out. There's still captions but used fairly sparingly, appearing on one of the walls that slide up down and around Hildegard Bechtler's bare brick set. Actually it's all quite a nice use of old-fashioned stagecraft, as curtains, walls and blackouts conceal quick scene changes, and the somewhat gloomy atmosphere feels more at home in the second play, which takes its cue from Falstaff's scenes with Justices Shallow (understudy David Shelley) and Silence (James Garnon) to focus on the play's melancholy reflections on ageing and death. It may be why, unusually, I enjoyed Part II more than Part I this time around.

Speaking of traditional productions, after his last London show played consciously with the very concept of colour/gender/age-blind casting, it's notable how male this version is, with Annette McLaughlin's Warwick the only major gender-flipped character. I definitely could have done with more of Clare Perkins' no-nonsense Mistress Quickly but then maybe that's part of the point, as she occasionally bursts like a breath of fresh air into this oppressive, masculine world. Maybe I was expecting more fireworks from Icke's return - Player Kings is largely enjoyable and tells the parts of the story it keeps well, but this kind of merging of the two plays can be tricky, and it doesn't always overcome that.

McKellen was right though: He's good, but Allam was better,

Player Kings (Henry IV Part 1 & Henry IV Part II) by William Shakespeare in a version by Robert Icke is booking until the 22nd of June at the Noël Coward Theatre; then continuing on tour to Bristol, Birmingham, Norwich and Newcastle.

Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.