Henry VI: Part Two (RSC)

Note: The following review dates from the production’s original Stratford run in January 2001.

Shakespeare’s three plays about the reign of Henry VI are early works
which lack the complexity and subtlety of some of his later histories. But
there are riches enough in them to make these RSC productions in the round
in a re-designed Swan Theatre well worth a visit.

This second play of the trilogy opens with the marriage of the teenage
king to the strong-willed Margaret of Anjou. Queen Margaret’s tempestuous
affair with the Duke of Suffolk culminates in the duke’s particularly bloody
murder and decapitation. Meanwhile, the feuding between the leading barons
reduces England to near anarchy and, by the end of the play, the Wars of the
Roses have begun.

Henry VI is often portrayed merely as a weak king dominated by his wife.
David Oyelowo offers us a much more complex figure. Young and terribly
vulnerable, he has occasional passionate outbursts which reveal his
immaturity, instability and poor political judgement.

In an interesting piece of casting, Fiona Bell – who played Joan of Arc
in the first play of the trilogy – now plays England’s warrior queen,
Margaret of Anjou. But she’s less convincing as Margaret than she was as
Joan. It’s not so much that she looks too young for the role, more that she
appears as a self-willed, 20th-century young woman in a production
firmly rooted in a 15th-century setting.

This play has fewer battle scenes than Henry VI Part One but no
shortage of spectacularly violent deaths and several severed heads. We also
get a touch of low-life with the witch Margery Jourdain and her familiars,
and an abortive peasants’ revolt led by the charismatic Jack Cade, played by
Jake Nightingale, at the head of an anarchic band of Kentish rebels.

There’s a large cast of English nobles related to each other in
impossibly complicated ways. At times, it’s difficult to keep track of who’s
who and how they’re related to someone else. But three senior members of
the company emerge as the dramatic foundations on which the play’s episodic
structure rests. Richard Cordery as Humphrey of Gloucester, uncle and Protector to the
young king, has passion, choler and sincerity and he makes the duke
something more than a mere bully. Clive Wood as Richard of York, the
claimant to Henry VI’s crown, combines ruthless ambition with a genuine
belief in the rightness of his cause. Geoff Francis as the Earl of Warwick,
the “Kingmaker”, emerges slowly and inexorably from the background. In a
performance made all the more powerful and sinister by under-playing, he
reveals himself as the iron in the soul of England.

If all the performances had been of the quality of those three, this
would have been an outstanding evening. Still, it’s an engrossing one and
director Michael Boyd has ensured that, by staging this production in the
round, the action is always “in your face”. No member of the audience is
more than a few feet from the action and it’s impossible not to feel
involved.

Whether it’s the violence of peasant risings or revolting nobles,
Shakespeare hammers home his message of the misery of civil war and the need
for strong government, public order and peace. Boyd makes sure that no
member of the audience fails to understand the horror of such violence and
civil disorder.

Robert Hole

Henry VI Part Two continues in repertory at The Swan,
Stratford-upon-Avon, until 10 February 2001, then plays at the Power Center,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA 10-18 March, and at the Young Vic,
London 29 March to 26 May.