The Histories
Henry VI Parts 1-3, Richard III
The Roundhouse, London

The “i” in “parliament” is silent; its vocalisation is a recent and erroneous affectation. This may well be my greatest single criticism about the second tetralogy of Michael Boyd’s RSC production of Shakespeare’s history plays. All else is not quite perfect enough to warrant a five-star rating, but excellent enough to make four seem somewhat niggardly.

Although portraying events subsequent to those of the Richard II/Henry IV Parts 1 and 2/Henry V tetralogy, these plays – Henry VI Parts 1-3 and Richard III – were written earlier, and may well be the earliest of Shakespeare’s plays to survive. One can see a progression in authorship skills from the unsubtle jingoism of Henry VI Part 1 to the greater complexities of Richard III . The staging in the Roundhouse space, too (in which a clone of Stratford’s Courtyard Theatre has been erected), makes the cycle feel like a civic event of sorts. Boyd’s previous staging of this production in the Young Vic in 2001 did not show such a sense of the audience bearing witness as citizens to the narrative of the state.