Review: Shakespeare conflated

The Criterion is nothing if not ambitious. Here is Jane Railton, an

upstart new Elizabethan from Coventry, conflating two of Shakespeare’s

best-known history plays, slipping in an extract from another, throwing

in some Holinshead with a line or two from the sonnets before adding a

scene of her own.

What does she achieve by it?

Something that keeps the audience engrossed and entertained for

three hours. She also manages to make some of us think again about the

bibulous and lecherous if loveable old rogue who gives his name to this

adaptation. Jack Falstaff has always been a character instantly

recognisable to those of us who have spent some time in taverns being

entertained by the ample-girthed old boy holding forth at the bar.

He is well spoken (if a little slurred) yet able to mingle with all

classes. Unlike Prince Hal, whose company he cultivates, he is not just

slumming it for a while. He may be fat, lazy, boastful and dishonest,

but he is held in affection by the lower orders – even by those to whom

he owes money. And it is among them that he finally breathes his last,

broken by his ultimate rejection by the calculating prince.

By re-shuffling Henry 1V parts one and two Jane Railton can re-

focus on Falstaff and his relationship with the future king, contrasting the

ruthlessness of one with the warmth of the other – his contempt for the

notion of courtly honour and his love of life.

None of this would have been achievable without the stalwart

efforts of an evidently inspired and dedicated cast. Pete Meredith seems

to grow into the part of the Prince, dissolute and mischievous when it

pleases him, cold and calculating when it suits. And Sean Glock gives a

splendidly demented performance as the hot-headed Hotspur, enemy of

diplomacy, lover of death. “Die all, die merrily,” he says with wide-eyed

abandon at one point.

With such a large canvas to cover, it is inevitable that many of

the actors take on more than one part. Pete Gillam gives the Earl of

Northumberland a believable Geordie accent before retuning the voice

slightly north of the border to play Douglas as the Alex Salmond of his

day. Peter Brooks, meanwhile, gives us a clipped and starchy Lord Chief

Justice before slipping into a resonant and lilting Welsh accent as the

original windbag Owen Glendower.

9-10

Chris Arnot