Nowhere in world drama is the human condition more human, more frail, more mortal than in Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays. Shakespeare takes up the idea of the flesh, of corruption, of death and the passing of life's sweetness, and he spins variations on it like Mozart with a theme until our head bursts with feeling.
Nicholas Hytner's new National Theatre production isn't perfect, but I've encountered none so interesting. Mark Thompson places the action on a wooden central avenue between "bare ruin'd quires". Neil Austin's lighting is devoid of mellowness: our feeling is that we and the plays are surrounded by darkness.
Amid this, Falstaff, most human of human beings, returns to us in the guise of Michael Gambon. I wish he showed the gourmet relish for Falstaff's language that others have brought to the part. But he, most fascinating of Falstaffs, seems to stand inside the role and outside it at the same time, sometimes inhabiting the role and sometimes demonstrating it. He is the least robust of Falstaffs: though he lives on while other characters die, the whole play might be his death scene. Yet this dotard dotes, and this gives him an innocence: he follows Prince Hal around with face upturned, and hand outstretched, like a sunflower turning to the sun. But at the end, when he is dragged off to prison, he leaves with a wailing roar.
The staging has literally hundreds of great moments: often they coalesce into entire scenes. Many of the supporting actors are superb, none more than John Carlyle as Archbishop Scroop. Most of the leading actors, despite big carrying voices and interpretative brilliance, could illumine the roles better if only their enunciation was crisper. David Bradley's shaken, gaunt Henry IV is searing when you can hear him; the thinking virile charm of Matthew Macfadyen's Prince Hal, both calculating and naive, would be ideal if only he let the words dance.
No director today has a finer sense of Shakespeare's politics than Hytner; and yet how much love is here, not least for the tender trivia of life. It is thrilling to have the great John Wood back on stage as silly old Justice Shallow, never sweeter, never more musical than in his phrasing of every tender return to the inescapable fact of age and death.
My mind returns to Gambon. He sits with Doll Tearsheet, dances his hand about her face as if he had turned into Romeo, asks "Kiss me, Doll" with infinite pathos, and then turns his face to say: "I am old, I am old." It feels as if time itself were passing through him, and us.
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