The Player Kings at the Seymour Centre is an enormously ambitious abbreviation and production of Shakespeare’s famous history tetralogies of the Henriad and the Wars of the Roses, compiling eight plays into a rough nine hours. It is therefore extremely impressive that Sport for Joves’ production is entertaining while retaining the majesty of Shakespeare’s voice. While this does falter in sections, the majority of the performance is brilliant in its conception and execution.
This owes largely to the composition of the pieces. Writer and director Damien Ryan’s work is commendable, for he effectively condenses eight plays each with enormous casts, plots, side plots, dialogues, monologues, digressions, and questions into a thematic and expressive unity. Ryan’s craft is akin to that of collage, cutting away context and frames to support a cohesive refashioning of Shakespeare. What therefore remains is not exactly the plays themselves in an abbreviated manner, but a vision which bears the distinct mark of recreation and reassemblage. This is not necessarily negative, for the refitting of Shakespeare into a new creative vision allows for a level of expressive and thematic resonance between works that cannot be explored within typical structures of single-play performance, and which affords the audience some leisure.
This is most evident through the monologues that Ryan chooses to maintain, as well as his direction of the production: he focuses incisively on themes of death and insurrection, on the passage of time, and on the balance between order and chaos. He gives special attention to the exchange of crowns. This is especially emphasised in the new transition between Henry IV Part II and Henry V, where the younger Hal hands his older image his crown, stepping into the shadows, while Henry, the King who will win Agincourt, steps into the light. This is brilliantly portrayed as if Hal passes through a mirror, exchanging places with his picture. Such a touch is incapable of happening within the traditional Shakespearian structure. These details are where The Player Kings shines.
It is not all brilliance however. Many memorable lines are lost in Ryan’s cutting, some that perhaps could have benefited the production if they remained or were refitted. Hotspur’s “An’ if we live, we live to tread on kings” is lost, and some of Richard the III’s better self introspection is curtailed in favour of brevity. The movements between plays can also be confusing. This is especially true of larger changes, manifestly those within the second half between Henry VI and Richard III. Henry VI is perhaps the weakest of the abridgements, with the enormous cast of characters remaining hard to track throughout the three plays as they age and change performers, and the characterisation of Henry the VI as a simpleton errs on the side of simplicity itself, failing to represent the greater nuances of his character and his struggle between piety and political realism. This does not, however, significantly damage the entire production, but presents an uncomfortable bump in an otherwise smooth story.
The players of The Player Kings too must be commended. Each part truly shines, and the performances of Richard II, Henry IV, and Richard III especially stand out. Falstaff, as usual, remains an audience favourite, with Steve Rodgers quips to the audience and his conscription of the front row into Falstaff’s militias being especially memorable.
Ultimately, The Player Kings represents a brilliant reframing and recreation of some of Shakespeare’s finest work. While it must necessarily trade off the greater part of Shakespeare’s two tetralogies, Ryans manages to maintain the entire Shakespearean range of emotional expression, and what is cut facilitates clear new connections to sprout between the plays. This was a production I will always remember. These nine hours of Shakespeare were mostly masterly through and through.
