Writers and Directors: Nina Bowers and Philip Arditti
William Shakespeare’s plays are a vital component of British theatre, meaning that most professional actors will at some point be involved in at least one production. His history plays – particularly Henry V – are also held up as symbolic of English pride and cultural identity. So what does that mean for two actors who have moved to the UK from their homelands?
That’s the starting basis for Nina Bowers and Philip Arditti’s English Kings Killing Foreigners, in which the writers and directors also perform as actors conveniently named Nina and Philip. Meeting as they both arrive late to rehearsals for a new production of Henry V to find themselves locked out of the building, their differences emerge. Nina is open about the impostor syndrome she has felt since moving to London from Canada; for Philip, a Turk immersed in otherwise irrelevant historical facts he’s had to learn for his Citizenship exam, his insecurity manifests as name-dropping and emphasising his RADA training.
What could be a drily serious examination of Shakespeare’s place in our country’s culture, and how that affects those among us for whom the UK is a second home, is kept light not only by Bowers and Arditti’s astute comedy writing and performance but with a series of fourth-wall breaking interactions with the audience. From playing a game of MadLibs with the play’s title to playing hide and seek with the world’s largest tennis ball, the duo reinforce their position as actors Nina and Philip donning their roles as actors “Nina” and “Philip”, while also emphasising that the humanity of the characters is part of themselves. Whether this level of metatextuality is needed is debatable, but it certainly fits within Bowers and Arditti’s style of clowning comedy.
As the production of Henry V progresses, Nina finds herself suddenly promoted from Third Soldier to King. This gives the duo some opportunity to riff on rehearsal techniques intended to find deeper meaning in some of Shakespeare’s most well-known soliloquies, but which expose some of the prejudicial microaggressions about ethnicity, religion and other intersectional biases that many people in Bowers and Arditti’s position must contend with.
As events move on to the performance itself – cleverly and subtly delineated by designer Erin Guan as being visually distinct from the play we have been witnessing – the duo’s work asks what it means when someone buys so wholeheartedly into Henry’s famous St Crispin’s Day speech. By being stirred by it, whether as actors or audience, are we buying into the same culture that relentlessly casts Arditti either as a terrorist or a kebab shop owner?
Among that, too, is an astute satirisation of the frequent claims that any Shakespeare work has a specific relevance to any topic of the day – from Gaza and Ukraine to queerness, PTSD and even ULEZ, according to Bowers’s hilarious final speech. As the play ends with an ultimate piece of clowning from the pair, there is one more emphasis that this piece is more about having fun with such concepts than an attempt to solve the intractable conflation of English pride and jingoism.
In the week that saw violent protests in London tied to St George’s Day, the news reminds us that such issues have real-world implications. English Kings Killing Foreigners astutely reframes the debate in a comedic way. It reminds us that hanging everything on the vision of war as written by a 17th-century glove salesman’s son might, indeed, be the height of silliness.
Continues until 11 May 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Astutely silly
