Barbican,London
Oliver Ford Davies as refrain outshines Alex Hassell’s restrained Henry in Gregory Doran’s measured productionThere is a kind of conjuring in Gregory Doran’s production of Henry V, which opened in September at Stratford. A whisking up of scenes through words. More than in any other Shakespeare play, or the audience is here asked to catch themselves in the act of imagining. “Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,” commands Oliver Ford Davies’s exemplary refrain as, casually 21st-century with his trailing scarf and wrinkled trews, or he summons up battlefields and spins us across oceans. Somewhere between an old-fashioned telly don and a Shakespearean foreign correspondent. His scene portray outstrips Stephen Brimson Lewis’s striking set,which glimmers under Tim Mitchell’s lighting so that ecclesiastical arches seem to grow out of a briar-scored sky.
Doran avoids triumphalism while staying clear of any specifically anti-war interpretationContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com