Theatre review: Henry V (RSC/RST)

A Henry V that doesn't feel horribly topical when a foreign war is launched to distract from a domestic crisis must be as rare as one that doesn't co-opt something from the Henry IV plays to build its world. Both themes are present together as 50% of the RSC's Artistic Director reunites with Startled Giraffe Alfred Enoch: Tamara Harvey's production opens with Enoch's Hal mistaking his sleeping father for dead and prematurely taking the crown. It feels notable that he shoos away a servant as the old king (Valentine Hanson) admits his claim to the throne was tenuous, and then goes on to advise his son to solidify his own position by invading France. This becomes pretty much the whole plot of the play that follows, but Hal's statement that the weight of responsibility led Henry IV to his early grave turns out not to be as relevant to him.

It used to be that productions of this play could choose between playing the lead as a hero or a psychopath, but it feels like a long time since the former option seemed viable. So when Enoch's Henry becomes king he talks about the moral weight of the crown but it's hard to believe he means or even understands it.

So we get a smiling assassin: Henry is seen early on as being in a romantic relationship with Scroop (Diany Samba-Bandza) but this doesn't stop him from having her executed with the others when she turns out to have conspired against him (Harvey stages these hangings, throwing the trio off the revolving wooden tower that's the centrepiece of Lucy Osborne's set; it makes sense as a way of showing his brutal pragmatism, as an audience seeing this independently of the other plays in the sequence won't know of his connection to Emmanuel Olusanya's Bardolph.)

Of course psychopaths can be charming and Enoch certainly is, but he directs this charm offensive mostly at the audience, at whom he's aiming his attempts to go down in history as one of the greats. But "Once more unto the breach" is delivered to a stage full of injured and dying soldiers who've been dragged into his war and aren't remotely stirred by the speech - Harvey regularly has her cast drop dead to the stage then get up to serve as the next round of cannon-fodder.

This brutal take is everywhere: Even the famous comic "English lesson" takes place as Katherine (Natalie Kimmerling) tends to injured French soldiers, and the later "wooing" scene is even colder: Henry proposes to her over the dead body of her brother the Dauphin (Michael Elcock.) Elsewhere we get a fresh take on the usually solid and composed King of France: Jamie Ballard makes him shrill, emotional and jittery, his Queen (Catrin Aaron) clearly the one keeping this court together.

Harvey's production is the polar opposite of the jingoism a lot of people still associate with the play - it's stark, with no rousing fight scenes but a lot of movement sequences showing the deadly consequences, and to avoid even any light relief, Paul Hunter plays Pistol. It's not a dull production of a play that can be prone to that, and it certainly feels like a Henry V for today, but I could have done with a little more break from its coldly smiling ruthlessness.

Henry V by William Shakespeare is booking until the 25th of April at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.