Thrilling new take on Henry V heads to Worthing

Her response is the production she is bringing to Worthing on Tuesday, February 28 – a production which is lean, chilling and gripping. The suggestion that she sink her teeth into Henry V came from Shakespeare’s Globe in London, where the resulting co-production has just enjoyed a critically acclaimed run at their indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, winning rave reviews.

“I was interested in whiteness and nationalism, and I had another play entirely in mind,” admits Holly. But the more she looked at Henry V, the more obvious it became that it had plenty to say about not only whiteness and nationalism, but also imperialism, immigration, Brexit, Royalism and our country’s status as an international power (or not).

The story of Henry V leading British troops to an unlikely victory over the French, the play has often been subject to critical interpretations, from Nicholas Hytner’s Iraq war-era 2003 version to a bleak recent production at the Donmar starring Kit Harrington. Yet it is older, more triumphantly nationalistic outings that still loom largest in many audiences’ minds: the Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh films, for instance, taken as stirring portraits of national pride.

“Henry V has been used and co-opted, through various points in history, as a piece of nationalist propaganda,” says Holly. Reading it, she felt like she had “unearthed an origins story of the creation of Englishness. I felt like this story needs to be held accountable for its contribution to the ideology of Englishness, with all its toxicity.”

“I don’t think Shakespeare wrote a piece of propaganda; I also don’t think he wrote a searing criticism. I think he’s written something very smartly ambiguous. And what me and the team set out to do was to turn the dial up on the bit of the play that is often turned down.”

Running at just two hours long, this is a pared-back and pitch-black Henry V, a psychological thriller where the human cost of an expansionist war, conducted to burnish the male ego, is laid bare.

In Holly’s version, rather than a noble hero, their Henry is a dangerously capricious leader: one minute, full of anxious self-doubt; the next, spurred by a near-psychotic temper into cruel practical jokes and merciless vengeance. This Henry has the self-questioning interiority of a Hamlet – his famous “once more unto the breach” speech is delivered inwards, as if trying to spur himself to action rather than his troops. Yet he also possesses the manipulative zeal of a Richard III: not a statesmanlike king, but one of Shakespeare’s arch villains.

“I had a strong sense that I wanted an unreliable, maniacal, Richard III [style] Henry. And (actor) Oli got us there, but via a really long journey – in the first half, [he’s a] fragile, vulnerable bullied child who suddenly finds he’s got to rule the county.”

The play also closes in an unconventional way: with a brief final scene that is completely new, and which brings the play sharply into contemporary Britain and the hostile environment. Holly sees the play as being about “the origins of empire”, something she wanted to dig into at the moment.

“We are living in a time of post-Empire: crumbling economy and crumbling British might. How interesting to do a play that is all about the might of England, that has been used to get people riled up in the name of Englishness, at a point where it feels like our country is in decline on the world stage.”