Henry V, Globe - review

Dominic Dromgoole has set the bar high for the Globe's summer season as Jamie Parker plays the audience wonderfully as a hard but fair king
1/2
14 June 2012

After the enticing international extravaganza of Globe to Globe, it’s back to British business as usual at Bankside. Indeed, it would be hard, in this summer of national celebration, to get much more triumphantly British than Henry sticking it to the French at Agincourt.

What, too, could be more fitting than having Jamie Parker, so fine a Hal here two years ago in Henry IV Parts One and Two, making the logical progression to the next play? The result is another enjoyably sharp production from this resurgent venue — and we have artistic director Dominic Dromgoole to thank on both counts.

Dromgoole’s intelligent reading ploughs diligently through the lengthy preliminary exposition but truly flares into life for the battle scenes, played hard but fair by an honourable king. Henry has a default setting of crisp efficiency, as if to make up for the lost years in the taverns of Eastcheap, but we’re in no doubt that a very human heart beats beneath this no-nonsense exterior when Parker pauses alone, front stage, to take some deep breaths before embarking for France.

Parker has the felicitous gift of knowing precisely how to play to the audience in this challenging space — over which a helicopter buzzed angrily on opening night — without hamming it up.

He addresses his rousing pep talk before the siege of Harfleur to us all, with the result that we join him in crying “God for Harry, England and St George!” (It’s a rare actor who doesn’t mind the punters stealing his best lines). The climactic wooing scene has a lovely lightness of touch and there’s fine support from that Welsh windbag Fluellen (Brendan O’Hea). A double helping of Mark Rylance is still to come at the Globe this season but the stakes have been set high.

Henry V is in rep until Aug 26 (020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com).

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