Directed by Australian veteran theatre director Marion Potts, Bell Shakespeare’s Henry V is a sleek interpretation of the Hundred Years’ War. The full entourage of modern effects are deployed to create cinematic battles and the cast delivers passionate sermons on the brutality and glory of war. By the end, you are left with a version of the play that’s almost too clean.
Unlike many other Shakespearean history plays where power is distributed, Henry V is the King’s production. The test for the young monarch and the actor who plays him is if he can live up to the myth Shakespeare set up. JK Kazzi, who is making his Bell Shakespeare debut, leans into the traditional Machiavellian reading of the character. Always sure of himself, he delivers the English justification for war with ease, dispatching traitors and scoffing at French attempts to cow him with threats.
The rest of the cast falls around him to create the famous band of brothers. The royal court is removed from the set and the stage resembles a makeshift gym, with the English nobles wearing casual jackets and jeans. Exeter (Ella Prince) and Westmoreland (Alex Kirwan) wrestle and practice on punching bags. Because there is no crown to remind us who’s King, Prince and Kirwan’s blocking was more deliberate, shifting around the stage, always tracking Henry’s movements and mood.
Similar to the spotlight on Henry, Potts does not shy away from the play’s English perspective. The audience becomes the English people, the King addressing us directly as if we are going through the breach at Harfleur ourselves. The French, on the other hand, act mostly as comic relief. Their King (Jo Turner) is dressed in loose fitting clothing and decadently lays down sideways. The nobles Dauphin (Jack Halabi) and Montejoy (Mararo Wangai) joke more about ‘riding’ their horses than their use in battle. Whenever the French are on stage, with a teleprompter used to translate their banter, the audience would roll in laughter. The contrast with the cold and calculating English was stark.
When the battles begin, Potts places chaos above everything else. The sounds, smoke, and clomping horses overwhelm the stage. The only pauses are when an individual soldier falls into the spotlight, croaking as if they have been stabbed. The climax, the French cavalry charge at Agincourt, is thrilling. The entire cast ran towards the audience only to fall to English arrows. The audience’s English nature is cemented as the teleprompter flashes the names of the French dead while Henry smirks at us on stage. The director argues her goal is to show that “humanity is at war with itself”, but the English version of the conflict is never seriously undermined.
Not all the attempts to modernise the play were successful. The chorus speaking from a laptop on a lectern was jarring and the attempts to assign foot soldiers ID numbers was more distracting than humanising.
Even with the play’s focus on war, the French King’s daughter Katherine (Ava Madon), who is betrothed to Henry, has the last word. Madon breathes new life into scenes largely ignored when I studied the play in school. Her banter with Henry was the only part of the production where he was directly challenged. While Madson eventually submits to an arranged marriage, she reminds us who the female victims of war — that the play merely refers to — are.
In her speech to the company’s donors after the play concluded, Potts argued that plays exploring leadership and war are more relevant than ever in an increasingly divided geopolitical landscape. The production’s modern design certainly hints at its relevance, but the presentation of Henry’s conquest of France is anything but subversive. Hopefully, the federal and state ministers in the audience took her not-so-subtle hint to increase public investment in the arts.
Henry V is playing at the Sydney Opera House until April 5th.
