25 Henry IV, Part 2
-2014: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Barbican Theatre, London; and tour to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong; Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New York.
-Filmed, broadcast live and available on DVD, as part of Live from Stratford-upon-Avon.
Greg starts by asking whether Shakespeare started off to write two plays about Henry IV, or was the first such a success he had to write a sequel. ( Not the last to do this). Some people even prefer Part 2 to the first, but as Greg tells us "It is certainly in my experience a much harder play to do". We then get some background to how it came to be written, including references to The Famous Victories of Henry V that included parts about Prince Hal.
It is then on to a scene that includes Falstaff and Mrs Quickly as well as Prince Hal and Poins. Followed by talking about Pistol. Greg just seems to be describing the play rather than his usual personal account. But his description of the scene for the potential recruits for the army is so well written. All those comic idiots, especially the brave, or foolhardy, Feeble.
Better is the death scene of Henry IV and that "remorseful apology" from his son that results in a wonderful reconciliation. But why then did Shakespeare immediately change to Gloucestershire and those reprobates Falstaff and Bardolf who know nothing about what has just happened. Greg cuts it from the play! But he doesn't tamper with the scene when Falstaff returns to London to congratulate his old friend, only to be rejected by the new king and that very public humiliation. Henry tells him "Presume not that I am the thing I was" and banishes Falstaff. It all ends with the arrival of the Lord Chief Justice to arrest him and cart him off to the Fleet prison.
Anthony Sher's performance as Falstaff at BAM was described by the critic for the New York Times as "one of the greatest performances I have ever seen".
26 Henry V
- 2015: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Barbican Theatre, London; King and Country Tour.
Broadcast to cinemas and released on DVD.
Greg takes to cast to Westminster Abbey to see the tomb of Henry V. He died at the early age of thirty five. Greg goes back to 1599 when Shakespeare is opening Henry V at the newly built Globe Theatre. At the same time, the Duke of Essex is mustering 16,000 troops to do battle in Ireland. The co-incidence is not lost on the audience. When Gregg introduces the start of Act 2, its the Chorus who says "Now all the youth of England are on fire". (Maybe not to go).
We are soon into the comedy of Pistol and Nym vying for the hand of Mrs Quickly. When we get to France it's the Chorus again letting us know the troops get "a little touch of Henry in the night". Although Henry in disguise is quarrelling with a few of them. Greg lets us know how many times the play was performed over the years when conflicts were actually taking place.
He takes the production to China. The director of the Shanghai Arts Centre, Nick Yu, joins the company in rehearsals and wonders why such a big event in English history would make any sense to a Chinese audience. At the end he finds this was a play "about war, what it feels like, and what it costs. It's not a piece of propaganda".
27 King Lear
- 2016 and revived 2018: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York.
Broadcast to cinemas and released on DVD
A special play for me as this was for my A Level at school. We were taken to London to see Paul Schofield as Lear. Greg talks about how he could not face the play for years as it was too close to home. He explains all about his father's dementia. (That he always wore a tie, as did my father, not only for work. I haven't worn one since the day I finished work nineteen years ago). Greg tells us he could never watch the play, even when performed at Stratford. His father died in 2010 at the age of ninety.
Come 2013, and Greg talks to Tony about him taking on the lead role for a staging of Lear in 2016. (Tony had played The Fool twice, so knew it well). There is a great piece about presenting Lear's entrance at the start. Greg also describes why they include the mock trial from the first edition of the play that is not in the First Folio (1623 version). There is a wonderful description of Graham Turner's Fool as "dangerous radical alternative comedy". The set is also quite something, designed by Nick Turner.
I cannot remember the scene, described by Greg, when "two men walk on to a bare stage, one of them falls flat on his face, and then they both stand up, and start to walk off again. It's surely one of the finest scenes ever written".
When the production went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in 2018, it's there that Greg finally understands why Shakespeare changed his own happy ending to one of tragedy, one that early audiences rejected and had to be changed to pacify them. Then only Nahum Tate's 1681 revision was acceptable with that happy ending when Lear and Cordelia are happily reconciled. Greg said that he had ignored Shakespeare's instruction to "make the audience feel it's all going to end well". Before "bringing the play to it's tragic conclusion".
