When order is undone
Patrick Carnegy is much impressed by the RSC's Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3 These three plays are the least known and indeed often dismissed parts of Shake- speare's series of eight histories running from Richard II through to Richard III. In his magisterial survey, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1999), Harold Bloom offers them no more than seven pages in a book of doorstop proportion. For him all that is memorable is, grudgingly, Joan of Arc in part one, Cade the Kentish hoodlum in part two and in part three Richard Gloucester's appren- ticeship in butchery. Bloom saw that all three were 'vivid comedians', but as the drift of the plays in which they appear could be described as 'The Invention of the Inhuman', he had reason enough to give them short shrift. They are indeed pro- foundly subversive texts.
Others have valued them more highly. Wagner, who read the plays at least three times, usually aloud to Cosima after din- ner, admiringly noted that they provided 'a complete picture of the dreadfulness of life', remarking also 'the wonderful charac- terisation beneath the loose jumble'. But their modern revival does not catch fire until Peter Hall and John Barton's 'Wars of the Roses' adaptation (1963). It was sus- tained by Terry Hands's 1977 productions, by Jane Howell's television version for the BBC in the late 1970s (those were the days), by Michael Bogdanov's anti-Thatch- er interpretation of 1978-9 and by Adrian Noble's `Plantagenets' condensation of 1988. It is the men and women of the the- atre who have rescued the texts from the gradgrinds and amazed the unprejudiced with what they have found there.
This does include the interminable clash of arms between scarcely distinguishable factions and inordinate rivers of blood issu- ing therefrom. The director's first task is to find a way of tackling this without reducing the audience to boredom or helpless mirth. Manageable, maybe, for the span of a sin- gle play but not so easy when the Henry Ws are given virtually uncut and in the course of a single day, as they were at Stratford just before Christmas. In itself this 12-hour marathon is a first for the RSC, and doubt- less for most of us who were fortunate enough to be there. The director is Michael Boyd, who by February will have taken the story through into Richard III, his tetralogy rounding off the RSC's magnificent millen- nial venture, 'This England: The Histories'.
Boyd's strategy can perhaps best be described as trusting the text and going for it. Cuts are minimal and painless (as with the excision of a bizarre tiny part about the un-Gartering of a cowardly knight named Falstaff), while a few transpositions commit no sin against the bard. The result is a totally compelling enactment of Shake- speare's chronicling of England's fate after the death of Henry V.
Through the story runs the timeless theme of the fell consequences of broken oaths, of pursuit of policies of the 'murder- ous Machiavel', and of ineffectual leader- ship — in short, when order is undone. Shakespeare's audience could enjoy his depiction of chaos, congratulating them- selves on the relative stability of the Tudor dynasty which had rescued them from Plan- tagenet anarchy. Today we gaze into our own abyss without any such comfort.
Where past productions have honed in on the plays as ritualistic drama (Hall/Bar- ton), on the psychology of their dysfunc- tional characters (Hands's Queen Margaret, Helen Mirren, explained her relationship with Henry as 'flagellation in the chapel'), or imposed specific interpre- tations (as in Bogdanov's updating), Michael Boyd goes for it straight and with unashamed theatricality. No matter how Marlovian the rhetoric of the youthful Shakespeare, how lame or creaky it may be in places, the commitment to his language is total. The strength of this strategy is that even improbable and convoluted scenes knock you out with the actors' conviction of who they are and what they are about. And you have the bonus of being free to choose your own interpretation.
Boyd's designer, Tom Piper, has cleverly remodelled the Swan stage so that it's effectively surrounded by the audience — you can easily find yourself uncomfortably close to the clangour of metallic doors, the clash of weapons, the squirt and squelch of blood and worse. But most remarkable is the circus-like use of vertical space for dizzying action on the ropes and scaling ladders of siege-warfare. Yet sickening realism in this mode is set against emblem- atic artifice, as when prospective marriage partners are flown in from above, frozen in huge gilded frames — not people but exhibits to be evaluated for their dowries and political worth.
Boyd keeps the long chains of revenge and retribution alive by bringing back the slain as participatory ghosts. The unquiet shades of the doughty warrior Talbot and his son join forces in Cade's rebellion with those of the Cardinal, Gloucester and Suf- folk, and apotheosise their own deaths in the Morality episode of the Father and Son who've unwittingly murdered each other.
Boyd fields an exceptionally strong ensemble in which the character doublings are unfailingly suggestive. Fiona Bell's gamin and cockily Irish Joan resurrects into a superb Queen Margaret, every inch the `tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide'. She's also the big cat who's got the double cream — a lover in the manipulative Suf- folk (Richard Dillane) and a royal husband in Henry. What is particularly striking is that, as the conciliatory King loses what hold he has had on his courtiers, he doesn't crumple but rather gains in assertive stature, standing up to the Queen to whom he had been wont to look despairingly for guidance. Thus the conflict between moral principle and unscrupulous ambition has not only pathos but also palpable dramatic force. David Oyelowo's Henry stands radi- ant in white like an improbable angel in the very jaws of hell. This young black actor makes credible and deeply sympathetic a role that has to be the moral centre without which the catalogue of the daemonic and inhuman would be meaningless. Like Richard Plantagenet, he too could say, `I am myself alone.' Much of the pleasure in the production is watching how Shakespeare nurtures the growth of distinctive, rounded character from the morass of feudal squabbling. This is especially memorable in Richard Cordery's powerful Lord Protector and in Clive Wood's masterful performance as York. You had to applaud the way in which this York lightened his wordy claim to the throne by laying out his genealogical tree on the floor with a sackful of pebble- stones. In him, the seed of royal ambition, once sown, catches terrible fire that con- sumes him in a horrendously brilliant death sequence before passing to inferno in 'mis- shapen Dick'. This latter role is entrusted to Aidan McArdle, recently seen as Puck in Boyd's Midsummer Night's Dream, and whose career in the Henrys begins with a mischievously amusing Dauphin, McAr- dle's compelling gifts as a comedian and now as a villain suggest that, graduated from Shakespeare's proving ground, he will metamorphose into a Richard III that one awaits with impatience. Wagner thought that Richard III should never be performed apart from the Henry VIs. He had a serious point.
The Henry VIs are at the Swan Theatre, Stratford, until 10 February, Richard III opens on 23 February. Richard II is at London's Barbican Pit until 3 February. In April the cycle of eight histories can be seen in the Bar- bican Theatre and Pit, and at the Young Vic.
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