Antony Sher as Falstaff

Henry IV: Parts 1 and 2

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford

by Richard Lutz

There is a moment in this production when you realise that Antony Sher, playing that rotund comic Falstaff, is doing something different.

Unlike a lot of Shakespearean actors, whether dramatic or funny, he is not rattling throughout the lines with a feverish intensity.

He is slowing the script down: he is helping you understand the words written some 410 years ago when the author sat down and created the two plays.

He is simply a master of stage craft and in charge of every word – much of it hilarious and knowing – that Shakespeare wrote.

This ability to change the pace of the play almost every time he has a line creates a change of balance from the hectic tavern scenes, the frenetic youth of Prince Hal or the maniacal nerviness of Harry Hotspur.

It is a gold plated performance, worth every farthing you can scrape up from behind the sofa to see.

The story is well known: Henry the Fourth is descending into not only illness but guilt. He knows he stole the crown from his predecessor  Richard II and had him killed. But he is also seeing his son Henry (played with glee by Alex Hassell) turn to the pub and the madcap ways of  booze-sodden John Falstaff. The king wants his son to grow up. And he won’t.

Prince Hal must change, mature, follow his gloomy father to the throne.

But something must be left behind. And it has to be bumptious, riotous, quick witted Falstaff.

it is a play about change, royal change.

But, of course  it is a play about getting pissed too. The tavern scenes are great gin-soaked affairs as ancient Mistress Quickly (Paola Dionisotti) rules haphazardly over her drunken patrons. Falstaff is the lord of inebriated mis-rule and, with Sher’s great delivery, you hear things you never heard before as he comments on everything from the joys of sherry, to the worthlessness of bravery, to his woes of never getting what is due him, to his own half-baked attempts of weaseling money out of everyone.

Director Greg Doran sticks to a traditional set and costume: all metal and leathers as if the male cast is from some sort of Elizabethan Hell’s Angels clan. There are no glitzy modern effects, no audio visual tricks to pop the play up. It is straight hard, funny and, ultimately, dramatic stuff as Falstaff and his devilry (and Sher’s delivery) must stand aside for the next chapter in Prince Hal’s life.

until  6th Sept

Tix: 0844 800 1114