HENRY VI: The battle to the death

by Ariel Wagner-Parker

During the next three and a half hours, the empty space is filled with sound and fury as the houses of York and Lancaster battle for the crown. A mighty tide of negative energy which rushes into the power-vacuum created by the weak king. One of Shakespeare's favourite images.

It is a production which harks back to the RSC's sixties' productions (the last RSC Henry VI dates in fact from 1977), with the emphasis on ensemble work, pace and meaning, underpinned by the simplest of sets. The cast is young - with few exceptions, it is the actors' first season with the company. They dominate the space with confidence and energy and present their characters with an "unhistrionic" sincerity, well-suited to characters which less psychological studies than emblematic representations of qualities such as ambition, power, or cruelty.

Battle is a near anagram of ballet and here the emphasis is on stylised and strongly rhythmic movement, a powerful representation of the ritualistic power-struggle in which all the participants are locked. The ritual element is continued in the prayers that precede the battles and the appearance of a figure representing death to carry off the many victims.

One or two characters needed to be more assertive perhaps - Clifford, for instance and his "counterpart" kingmaker Warwick - and one wondered why of the four brothers of York only Richard had a pronounced regional accent ( Lancashire ?). Still, on the whole the very lack of maturity of the cast brought a special poignancy to this play about the horror and futility of war: somehow, corruption and cruelty in young people is even more unbearable.

A few days before the RSC's visit, the Guardian theatre critic was lamenting the company's unadventurous programming, which tends to reduce the Shakespearian canon of 37 plays to a core repertory of 15 all-time greats (Hamlet, Tempest, Dream et al). The response was apparently that present levels of funding do not permit a higher-risk policy. This is a pity, since repeated productions of the best-known plays force directors to find something - anything - new to say about them, sometimes in spite of the text instead of in its behalf. And the something new is too often merely window-dressing: Shakespeare as product not process, as Deadly Theatre, a programme-filler for cultural tourists between free time for shopping and late supper.

And one wonders whether the "higher-risk" involved in staging less well-known works really exists. The success of the present production would seem to suggest the contrary, for various reasons: firstly, the spectator, instead of having the impression of assisting at a more or less stale ritual, lives a genuine theatrical experience: the excitement of discovering an unfamiliar text..the reaction of a contemporary audience to a contemporary play; secondly, many of the less well-known plays still have seams of meaning to tap, which have not been exhausted over the years. As this production shows, the history plays for one have a lot to say to our brutal and power-hungry age - this production was "inspired" by a visit to Bosnia, where a civil war is going on of a brutality similar to that portrayed here; substitute York and Lancaster for Serbs and Muslims..; and thirdly, the lack of production history allows actors to find their own way instead of trying to avoid following in their predecessors' footsteps. Part of the joy of this Henry VI was precisely the freshness of the performances (and the lack of people in the interval going "Oh yes, but of course when you've seen Olivier in the rôle...").

More of the same from the RSC please. Oh, and an annual Shakespeare production in Luxembourg would be wonderful.

Ariel Wagner-Parker

© Ariel Wagner-Parker, 1995 - published in "kulturissimo", 3 May, 1995

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