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Post by dlevi on Feb 18, 2022 16:02:20 GMT
I'm starting a Henry V specific thread rather than have it buried within the Donmar Season thread. Hope that's ok.
I saw the production last night and while they are saying it runs 2 hours and 45 minutes, it's closer to 3 hours and 10 minutes.
Overall it's an ok production. Mr Harrington delivers the big speeches forcefully but as for the rest of the performance he lacks a level of humanity in addition to his brutishness which (for me) has always set Henry V apart from Shakespearian monarchs. It's a gender equal cast which affords women the opportunity to play parts previously held by men. There's an inconsistency is the use of pronouns sometimes with the space of one speech. A sort of "Is She or isn't He ?" and there's a lot of doubling within the company so that becomes a bit more confusing when they're switching genders from one scene to the next. All that said, it doesn't make much difference to the production - just a distraction.
Max Webster's direction has some modern flourishes ( Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline being one of them) which, particularly in the battle scenes would best be labeled indulgences. If you have tickets, you won't be angry there's enough good stuff to warrant a post show discussion, but if you've been unable to book them, I wouldn't be too upset.
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Post by theatrefan77 on Feb 18, 2022 16:46:54 GMT
Thank you for the review. I'm going on Monday.
I was afraid that Harrington wouldn't be good enough an actor to bring out the contradictions of Henry's character and you have confirmed my fears. Still, looking forward to it. I really like the play.
Saw the Grandage production with Jude Law a few years ago and loved it, although Jessie Buckley wasn't very good as the French princess. For me she managed to spoil the few scenes she was in and her French was atrocious.
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Post by n1david on Feb 18, 2022 17:05:49 GMT
Next Thursday matinee cancelled due to "the impact of Covid on the production schedule". Wonder who's planning to get it next week?
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Post by theatrefan77 on Feb 19, 2022 14:41:10 GMT
Plenty of availability for Tuesday. This was originally the opening night, which has now been postponed
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Post by theatrefan77 on Feb 22, 2022 9:57:16 GMT
Saw this last night. Started about 15 minutes late. The director came on stage to let the audience know that several cast members had food poisoning and as a result 3 understudies would be sharing 6 parts. One of the understudies had the script in hand.
Overall, this was disappointing. Harington was just ok, at times not totally convincing. Hopefully he'll get better during previews. Physically he's changed a lot. He's much thinner and even his voice sounds very different from when he did Faustus or even True West.
The production itself is long, dull and boring. It's a least 20 minutes too long. Some scenes are really disjointed and the whole thing doesn't flow. There was a stupid scene with a man chewing and spitting leek which was totally pointless and unnecessary.
Just 2 stars from me. There's a lot of room from improvement -cutting 20 or 30 minutes would be a start-. Maybe by opening night it will be a bit better
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Post by drmaplewood on Feb 22, 2022 10:47:02 GMT
Quite a lot of availability tonight if anyone wants to take the plunge.
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Post by Dave B on Feb 22, 2022 11:57:02 GMT
We also saw it last night and I'd be in pretty board agreement with comments above. Harrington clearly sells tickets, a large group of young ladies waiting at the door as we left but other than the big speeches ...
The rest of the cast mostly fared better. As Theatrefan77 noted, three understudies on for 6 roles. Three cast members had got food poisoning that afternoon and given the previous cancellations, they did not want to cancel again. I thought the understudies did really well and it was only the fact that one was on with script marked them out as understudies, it was the interval before I saw the electronic display and realised who they were playing. On that, while I was not so impressed with KH's performance, he did make a point of.. well pointing to and warmly applauding/thanking the three understudies and they got a louder cheer from the audience (and cast) than the show had and that reflected well on him. The staging is quite simple and has a couple of nice touches, {Spoiler - click to view}I liked the family tree projections and I really like how the stage became a St George's Cross, that was hugely effective but other than that, it was really all over the place at times. Given the covid impact and now this bout of illness, it might come together a bit more for opening night but I'm not sure I see it doing so well. |
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Post by mrbarnaby on Feb 22, 2022 21:58:43 GMT
Oh dear, this sounds very disappointing.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 26, 2022 18:06:27 GMT
Saw it this afternoon. Not bad at all - though it does extend the running time unnecessarily in places and I was not keen on Chorus. They lingered on the hanging and the killing of the French prisoners more than any other production I’ve seen. They’ve really leaned into the idea that Henry is actually a bastard (not in the literal sense, obvs). The wooing scene is nicely creepy - it’s very clear that Katherine is not up for being wooed. Some of the gender-swapping was a bit inconsistent, and the extended French sequences dragged. I though Kit Harrington was quite good. Not as good as others I have seen, admittedly - maybe he’ll grow into it - but the big speeches work well. |
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Post by david on Feb 27, 2022 10:55:28 GMT
Not having seen any previous Henry V productions, I was keen to finally tick it off the list last night and for a £10 row C Circle seat I thought it was an ok watch but not one that would make an end of year top 10 shows watched list. KH I thought delivered those big speeches well but there where parts where it really dragged for me - the French speaking scenes and the Leek scene which could of been shortened or even cut without any detriment to the flow of the play and reduced the overall running time.
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Post by kathryn on Feb 27, 2022 14:21:25 GMT
It’s no wonder the lengthy French scenes dragged - they’re mainly in English in the original!
I’m not sure why they decided to translate them.
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Post by imstillhere on Feb 27, 2022 19:56:54 GMT
I caught this over the weekend. Now what I saw was a preview and that needs to be remembered but honestly it already feels like a production with nothing of any real interest to say. Dull. Dull. Dull. It lacks a liveness and heart. So little of the Michael Longhurst era has actually worked for me. It's just safe banal programming full of intellectual mediocrity. I want that place to feel alive and it hasn't for years.
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Post by Jan on Mar 1, 2022 7:31:59 GMT
Dull. Dull. Dull. It lacks a liveness and heart. Yes I'd agree with that. I thought Harington was good but he's totally cast adrift in a mediocre production. It seemed to me like a fringe production, even a drama school one at some points, and I expect more than that from a theatre with the resources and ticket prices of the Donmar. To stage a "big" play like that in a small space you need a really inventive director with a strong overall vision and Max Webster clearly isn't that - for example repeatedly staging big battles scenes by having the cast run on the spot just looks ridiculous and doesn't cut it. That leek scene looks superfluous (comments above) only because the comic scenes establishing those characters were botched previously. His music choices are hackneyed - best not to remind us of what a genius director Peter Greenaway is because we'll start making comparisons ? The acting is very variable, I'm afraid the Chorus is very weak, no engagement with the audience at all, just chanting the lines. The Dauphin is good. I liked the Salic Law explainer scene, and the wooing scene which is somewhat unconventional. That's about it. For the Shakespeare specialists: I'm unconvinced of the need to include a 10-minute long scene at the start cobbled together from lines from Henry IV to somehow try to explain the Henry/Falstaff backstory. For a start other than a stray mention Falstaff doesn't appear in Henry V at all. In those Henry IV plays you get 6 hrs of character development which explains who Falstaff and Hal are and what their relationship is and why it founders and why we should care about that. It is absurd to try to accomplish all that in 10 minutes and why bother ? Henry V has got more than enough in it as a stand-alone play without adding to it. 2* |
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Post by kathryn on Mar 1, 2022 8:49:09 GMT
Chorus actively annoyed me - not only ‘chanting’ the lines but I swear at times getting the emphasis wrong!
We thought the bit of Henry IV at the start was less about Falstaff than trying to set up Bardolph, Nym and Pistol as friends of Hal, hard-done-by and abandoned by him as king. Hence the particularly nasty and not at all comic leek scene.
Playing against the intended characterisations can be interesting - I did think the proposal scene very good - but it loses a lot of the charm and messes with the tone.
The reinterpretation of the proposal scene works, I think, because try as he might Shakespeare never quite convinces me that Katherine is anything other than a pawn, married off to seal the treaty. It’s written like a scene in one of the comedies but that just doesn’t fit the events of the play. So you *can* play against the writing.
But in most cases mucking around with ol’ Shakey’s tone and intention just won’t improve the play.
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Post by Jan on Mar 1, 2022 9:06:47 GMT
Chorus actively annoyed me - not only ‘chanting’ the lines but I swear at times getting the emphasis wrong! Chorus is a good role and normally attracts a senior actor - I remember Ian McDiarmid in the Kenneth Branagh production, John Woodvine in the ESC one, Norman Rodway for Michael Sheen, Pennie Downie for Adrian Lester. There were several minor irritations. I was OK with the translation of the French scenes into French but the projected English surtitles weren't actually the Shakespeare English text but an "improved" version by (I assume) the director. |
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Post by altamont on Mar 1, 2022 10:11:17 GMT
Oliver Ford Davies at the RSC in 2015 comes to mind too
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Post by Jan on Mar 1, 2022 10:53:59 GMT
Oliver Ford Davies at the RSC in 2015 comes to mind too Forbes Masson in the Michael Boyd cycle ? He's great at that type of role. Oh and BTW 3:00 is a short running time for this play especially as 10 minutes of that are from a different play. The full text running time can be around 3:40 so there are loads of cuts here which make some scenes perfunctory. In the circumstances I’m not complaining about the shorter run time though. |
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Post by kathryn on Mar 1, 2022 17:52:40 GMT
Chorus actively annoyed me - not only ‘chanting’ the lines but I swear at times getting the emphasis wrong! Chorus is a good role and normally attracts a senior actor - I remember Ian McDiarmid in the Kenneth Branagh production, John Woodvine in the ESC one, Norman Rodway for Michael Sheen, Pennie Downie for Adrian Lester. John Hurt in the TV Hollow Crown version was the (painful) comparison that sprung to my mind. |
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Post by Jan on Mar 1, 2022 18:15:56 GMT
Chorus is a good role and normally attracts a senior actor - I remember Ian McDiarmid in the Kenneth Branagh production, John Woodvine in the ESC one, Norman Rodway for Michael Sheen, Pennie Downie for Adrian Lester. John Hurt in the TV Hollow Crown version was the (painful) comparison that sprung to my mind. Derek Jacobi in the Branagh film was my first thought. I saw one production of it, I forget which, where it was an actual chorus in the Greek manner, shared between the actors. There are a few things you can do with the part with some imagination - I suppose this time we at least got some of it delivered in what ? Mandarin ? Japanese ? No surtitles for that. Plus the director had rewritten the closing lines of the play spoken by the Chorus - must have quite a high opinion of himself. |
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Post by teamyali on Mar 3, 2022 3:48:09 GMT
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Post by jojo on Mar 3, 2022 9:49:11 GMT
I'm going to have to wait for the NT Live screening, but everyone I know who has seen this has been very positive.
I think it's interesting that some people are confused or frustrated by the use of French by French characters, whilst others have loved it, thinking of it as a clever way of showing the French as their own people, which his particularly valid if your production embraces the idea that it was a dodgy war. I suppose it depends whether the person knows French, had a good view of the translation and/or brought their glasses. Modern tv and film drama tends to favour using subtitles, and I always pick subtitles over dubbing given the option, but I know it's not for everyone.
I don't know if it's still available, but there was an interview on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago and they talk about how you can play Henry as a glorious leader or as a manipulator. This production is going for the latter, and there was a particular discussion of whether or not pitching the wooing scene as coercive and aggressive was a different take. Webster rightly pointed out that we don't actually know how it was originally performed, and the more recent takes we're used to could be the ones that changed the tone and they are doing it as intended. I'd say the text supports their take, but I can see that it might jar with some.
I've heard a lot of people say they think it's timely, raving about Shakespeare's ability to stay relevant, but a friend who went the other day felt it was a bit on the nose.
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Post by Jan on Mar 3, 2022 10:06:59 GMT
Standard 2* restores my faith in critics.
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Post by budd on Mar 3, 2022 22:03:10 GMT
More reviews are out now. The production sounds uneven, but notices for Harington are pretty good across the board, which honestly I didn't quite expect.
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Post by kathryn on Mar 3, 2022 22:11:19 GMT
. Webster rightly pointed out that we don't actually know how it was originally performed, and the more recent takes we're used to could be the ones that changed the tone and they are doing it as intended. I'd say the text supports their take, but I can see that it might jar with some. . You have to ignore the entire thrust of the play - which paints Henry as a heroic virtuous King-come-good - and a lot of Shakespeare’s other works to think that we don’t know what the intended tone was. We can of course interpret the single play in any way we want, and new interpretations can be timely and interesting. But c’mon, the Histories are not subtle. Henry V is painted as national hero. |
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Post by jojo on Mar 3, 2022 23:00:35 GMT
Standard 2* restores my faith in critics. I've never had faith in critics. As a teenage girl I quickly learned that their tastes and my tastes were different, which isn't all that surprising, except the old men that seemed to do the reviewing didn't just have different taste, but seemed to actively hate things that might be popular with teenage girls, and then I quickly learned that something being popular with women was itself a criticism. I don't need reviewers to have the same tastes as me, and so long as they don't sneer and give a decent enough description of what they like, don't like and why, then I can read between the lines whether or not I'll like it more or less than them. For example, I'm not at all concerned by a review that complains that it's a modern version with no swords, or about the use of French and subtitles. On the other hand I would take it more seriously if they say the subtitles were poorly managed. I don't claim to be a Shakespeare expert, but we all have opinions on what he may or may not have intended in his scripts, and that's half the fun of new interpretations. But women getting married off for political alliances, or as the spoils of war has always been exploitative. The fact it's only become the mainstream interpretation in recent years doesn't change that, and it's more than reasonable to present the scene that way. Unfortunately it's fair to say many men then, and too many now, think sexually manipulative behaviour is heroic. That said, modern sensibilities see an invasion of France as an invasion of a sovereign country. Not that those on the receiving end of invasions thought it was heroic. A version that ignores our current understanding will have an audience, but a different one. Safe to say this version would be another thing for the Laurence Fox types to get angry about, but hopefully they can find something that suits them better. |
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