When viewing a Shakespeare production, many of us bring to the experience the memories of lessons taught to us, often in secondary school or university. So it is that I find it difficult to break with the interpretation to which I was exposed in the past. I still embrace Tillyard’s theory that the Bard’s history plays reflect the Elizabethan theory that to attack the king, anointed by God in the coronation service, is to commit a sin for which the assassin and country must pay.
Against this theory, Henry V must be viewed largely as a suspension of this pattern of sin and divine retribution, and instead as a patriotic glorification of the greatness of England and her monarch.
In fact, this is precisely the reason that the unforgettable movie version starring Lawrence Olivier was in part paid for by the British government as a way to boost the spirits of the British people during World War II. The film is above all a glorification of patriotic war.
The later film version directed by Kenneth Branagh is perhaps a more objective take on the play as it includes much of the negativity of war with its portrayal of traitors and their execution – more in line with the Elizabethan historical view.
These two films clearly illustrate that there is more than one way to interpret Shakespeare’s plays. Presenting theatre audiences with something new and creative can result in some novel exciting and entertaining theatre. Vancouver audiences have just such an opportunity to experience creative and rewarding performances in the current Bard on the Beach productions of As You Like It and Julius Caesar –both very well worth attending.
Sadly, director Lois Anderson’s adaptation of Henry V is a huge disappointment. Presumably, the war in Ukraine inspired the director’s vision, though in the end it contributes little to the discussion of that or any other war. Certainly the Henry of this production bears little resemblance to the masterly but staunchly resolute Ukraine president who has shown such important leadership skills.
Anderson is also at odds with the Bard himself in that she interprets the play in a way which blatantly ignores the author’s intention of showing war as sometimes a grand and glorious thing. Indeed, she seems unhappy to be involved with the play at all. Henry V, whether one takes a colourful view of it as did Olivier, or a much darker view as did Branagh, is clearly about a very magisterial king at war. Working against this interpretation, Anderson simply rewrites the play, making it about Henry’s evolution from an inexperienced youth to what is meant to be a confident monarch – despite the fact that the original play shows Henry as commanding. authoritarian, and totally imperial from the beginning.
The attempt at a new interpretation – one which to my mind is totally unsupported by the text – seems to indicate that Anderson would have preferred to direct a version of both parts of Henry IV with its concerns about the wild young Prince Hal at odds with his future, and his father despairing of what will happen to England once he dies.
Faced with Henry V, the director is clearly determined to make the story one that is anti-war and, above everything, about a weak man trying to rise to his imposed status.
Anderson takes elements of Henry V, including Chorus and much of the text of the play, and imposes herself on the production. The character named as Chorus in the original play has the job of describing for the audience scenes which could not be portrayed on the stage of the Globe and asking the audience to use their imaginations to fill out what he describes.
In this new version the role of Chorus has been greatly enlarged to provide a modern commentary, often preachy and frequently banal in its language, to tell the audience what Anderson sees as a new and important message – that there will always be war, that it will always lead to suffering, and that there yet remains the hope provided by love.
This theme is certainly present in Shakespeare’s play, but much of the original itself is sacrificed to this vision, including a framing in which a group of war refugees decides to act out a version of the play – presumably to voice their outrage at war.
Nor do the imposed changes end there. Instead of Henry being kingly from the beginning, we are supposed to see the play as his journey toward confidence in his role.
At its most egregious, this requires that in order to make the hesitant king more of a reality, the famous “Once more unto the breach …” speech is given to another character, played by Billy Marchenski, who could have been cast in the title role in a more conventional production of the play.
Instead, as Henry we have Kate Besworth, who throughout is so subdued that she makes almost no impression at all as a monarch.
Thus it is that later in the play, in the gently comic wooing by the king of the French princess, Henry is shown as a mere flounderer, incapable of even asking a woman for a date let alone her hand in marriage. In fact, in this production Henry never even achieves kingly status.
As I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with re-imagining Shakespeare. Some Bard on the Beach productions have done this brilliantly. One of my fondest memories is of The Taming of the Shrew interpreted as a spaghetti western (with a dazzling performance by Bob Fraser).
But for my taste, this rewriting of Henry V is a bridge too far. It may be novel, but it’s certainly not Shakespeare.
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