The Wars of the Roses, Rose Theatre, Kingston — review

Trevor Nunn’s stage productions in recent years have tended to display a relaxed performance pace that is faithful to our sense of naturalism but often in conflict with the requirements of dramatic impetus. No such slacking is in evidence in his production of The Wars of the Roses: it would be especially fatal on those days when all three three-hour productions are staged serially. Nunn is partly paying respect to the Rose’s great champion Peter Hall, who at the RSC in the 1960s adapted (with John Barton) and directed this edit of Shakespeare’s second tetralogy of history plays. In this version the three parts of Henry VI are compressed into two plays entitled Henry VI and Edward IV respectively, leaving Richard III more or less untouched.

It amounts to what you might call a live box-set-watching experience, and as such has attracted a number of prominent names. Joely Richardson makes a rare stage appearance as Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s queen and later an implacable voice against Richard III. A little too implacable in this case, since Richardson grows increasingly shouty as the chronicle progresses. Admittedly the dynamics in general grew less subtle as the all-day marathon progressed, but a little more variation would have been helpful. Another vocal miscalculation affects Robert Sheehan as Richard Crookback. Sheehan suppresses his native Irish accent beneath an assumed patrician Englishness, but it then sounds as if he’s consciously doing the kind of Richard III voice that has been stereotypical since Olivier. His leg-calipered physical performance is excellent, his facial deadpanning even more so, but Richard is famously one of the most soliloquising characters in all of Shakespeare, and it is hard for an audience to trust such an artificial voice.

The trilogy begins with a strongly acted focus. Alex Waldmann’s skills have grown over the years and are now meshed with his still-boyish features to create a convincingly innocent, youthful Henry VI; he grows in wisdom, but scarcely in understanding regarding the ruthlessness demanded by kingship. Oliver Cotton, Alexander Hanson and Andrew Woodall each play a clutch of nobles (sometimes flamboyantly bewigged); Rufus Hound continues his successful journey from stand-up to acting as the revolting peasant Jack Cade; and Edward IV’s queen Elizabeth Woodville is played with characteristic powerful directness by Alexandra Gilbreath, too seldom seen onstage of late.

Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part I, which forms the bulk of the first part of this trilogy, is openly propagandistic, exulting in Henry’s triumph over the French led by a Joan of Arc who is explicitly a witch. It is unsurprising that it feels more satisfying in its own right than either its immediate successor or such a hobbled portrayal of Richard III (no pun intended). Nevertheless, in both Barton and Hall’s editing and Nunn’s production, this is probably the clearest account of these wars’ dynastic factionalism that I have seen.

To October 31, rosetheatrekingston.org