Henry V review: Kit Harington is borderline deranged in a revival that is historic in more ways than one

It says a lot for the excellently controversial revival that it manages to rise to this crazy occasion with well-drilled zest and discipline

(Helen Murray)

Henry V is an intrinsically doubled-edged work. Is Shakespeare’s Plantagenet hero the supreme instance of patriotism as he trounces the French at Agincourt? Or is he a war criminal? Or is he a bit of both – wrapped up (courtesy of the Bard’s profligate genius) in the one deeply conflicted individual?

It’s no accident the piece has found what is generally regarded as its most indelible moments on screen – in Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film (England fighting Nazism in Europe) and Kenneth Branagh impressively disillusioned 1989 post-Falklands movie.

Cut to this week. Vladimir Putin (Russia’s kleptocrat-in-chief, the war criminals’ war criminal) invades Ukraine without provocation. His motive – to hold onto power, to prevent the spread of Nato. The brave people of Ukraine put up a heroic resistance. Ukraine’s ambassador to England gets a round of applause in the UK House of Commons. The Duchess of Cambridge tearfully pledges her support. Billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich puts up for sale his all-conquering Chelsea football team and pledges to give money to a trust for the victims of this conflict, though whether this is safety precaution against mounting sanctions in future is moot.

(Helen Murray)

So it says a lot for the excellently controversial revival of Henry V, which has just opened at the Donmar Warehouse, that it manages to rise to this crazy occasion with well-drilled zest and discipline. It is directed by Max Webster and stars Kit Harington, who is packing the Donmar out because of his Game of Thrones fan base. With his West End-starring debut a few years back as an updated Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s play about the overreaching scholar, Harington gave notice of his depth of perspective and that there was a lot more to him than a fetching set of pecs.

The production pullulates with fresh, thought-provoking decisions. The Chorus is played by Millicent Wong, who has a powerful charisma, agilely negotiating the golden fake-marble construct of Fly Davis’s spare, imposing set. In the chastening epilogue to the play, the Chorus tells how all of Henry V’s territorial gains were lost by his hapless son, Henry VI. Wong expands the text and slows it down in a challenging way. There were so many advisors around the newly crowned boy, she recounts, “that they lost France and made his England bleed”. “His England… your England… my England,” Wong ruminatively intones. Passport nationality comes to take second place as a notion to something more inclusive.

Of a piece with this is the very fertile idea of having the French royal family deliver the lines in their native tongue. This gives rise to pertinent comedy. Olivier Huband gives a very funny performance as a Dauphin who rather fancies himself and psyches himself up on surreptitious snorts of cocaine. Anoushka Lucas gives a seriously lovely, mettlesome performance as Katherine, the French princess who has to accept Henry as her husband. Instead of the usual wince-making episode where she tries out her English vocab, she spars with her female boxing coach (which is so true to the jabbing rhythm of the dialogue).

(Helen Murray)

Harington as Henry is very fine indeed. His performance pinpoints how the king compensates for his troubled conscience by borderline-deranged flurries of “we happy few” patriotic pep talk. He is often close to banked-down hysteria. His wooing of Kate is as bluff and intimidating, in its maladroit courtly male-order manner, as the moment when the back wall parts in a cross shape, and the monarch looms forward on a gantry to harangue the citzens of Harfleur about the rape and pillage they can expect if they resist his will.

There must be so many demands on the time of Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain at the moment that you would think twice about inviting him to anything. But I think he would be intrigued, rather than affronted, by Max Webster’s production. The show exemplifies how the meaning of a theatrical production can change radically. A day can make all the difference. Make no doubt: this Henry V is historic in more ways than one.