The first fortnight of rehearsals has passed in a whirlwind of scenes as we try to sketch out the show.听Normally, I'd prefer to work more cautiously, gently investigating each scene, but here there is so much to do, so many scenes and characters, that we have just plunged straight in and started to put the show on its feet with minimal exploratory work. The sheer number of people populating the the Henry VI plays is intimidating - virtually every scene brings a new character to introduce, and with them new complications.听In Shakespeare's day, the audience would have known who these people were.听They would have known the history, the personalities and the famous battles of the Wars of the Roses to the same degree as we know the Second World War today.听 Shakespeare writes economically, assuming this foreknowledge, so we have to constantly make assumptions about our audience - will they know this, do we have to explain or contextualise that?听I have cut the show already for running time, but sometimes I also have to cut characters to streamline things a bit and make the core story easier to follow. | "The plays depict a society gradually becoming brutalised by decades of war, and the dying out of chivalry and nobility" | |
Already it is becoming clear that these plays are grubby and violent, an anti-heroic counterpart to the patriotism of Henry V.听They depict a society gradually becoming brutalised by decades of war, and the dying out of chivalry and nobility.听Our modern dress staging helps this, as contemporary warfare often seems to have little to do with historic notions of honour, but one of the key questions arising is how much to show? I want the play to have a raw, occasionally shocking quality, but we must decide when it is better to leave it to the imagination.听There are also so many battles in the course of the narrative that we can't stage them all literally - it would get boring for the audience, so we must get creative with them.听Then there's the problem of traffic jams - so many people to get on and offstage in an enclosed space with limited exits and entrances. These are the bitty, fragmented days of rehearsal, trying to keep sight of the whole as we work on little sections at a time. So we keep ourselves sane by looking for the humour.听 Jonathan, playing Henry, makes us all laugh with his eccentricity playing the king as a teenager, or Richard Easterbrook as the Bishop of Winchester, relishing his machiavellian role with a twinkle in his eye. For amidst the noise and the action, the great betrayals and the passions of history, it is the quiet moments of wit and warmth that make these plays great, and we must take care to give them space. Mark France |
