Writer: Beth Flintoff
Director: Hal Chambers
Let’s say it. For all their intensity and undeniable merit as immense works of art, Shakespeare’s history plays can be properly challenging to get to grips with. All the factions, shifting allegiances, unending supply of aristocrats and courtly squabbles – it’s draining.
Beth Flintoff’s look at England’s King Henry I, William the Conqueror’s son, has all those elements. But with a more modern vocabulary (though varied in style and tone) and a concentration on the relationships between a manageable handful of main characters she gets across most of the thrilling complexity of his reign in neatly accessible terms.
Flintoff’s play covers the path to power, the largely internecine battles with various relatives like his brother Robert the Duke of Normandy and some of his 20 children (both legitimate and other) he must start or quash, the tensions in the man himself about what kind of ruler he aspires to be and the traumatic choices he must make to achieve those goals and more. It’s a richly educational historical text, with a lot of detail related to the young country of England, not even two centuries old at that point.
Her portrait of Henry’s undulating personal journey is compelling, taking us from his early martial success through his accession and political strife to his end as a distraught and repentant man, the horror of his life’s decisions haunting him so much he builds Reading Abbey, the biggest in the country, so God will notice him. While Henry’s journey is all well and good, it’s Flintoff’s placement of the women in the piece that saves it from a trudge through battlefields and ruins. The aristocracy is shown mostly uniformly to treat power selfishly, allocating and shuffling grants of land and power at will to their friends and launching costly military action with no thought given to the ordinary worker or soldier.
The women are guilty of this too, in a dubious win for equality. But while the men struggle to be adequate and meet their definition of power, they still manage to treat the women as property – marrying them off for political and dynastic gain. The women tolerate it mostly but show they’re more successful and influential chatelaines than chattel, ruling over land and people wisely and effectively in the men’s absence. It brings much-welcomed colour and nuance to a story that could have been one of many about the wars silly men fight.
It still feels procedural in places with fights and repercussions and consequences spilling out and following each other over the king’s life. The energy flags towards the end and by the time of Henry’s son’s tragic death it feels like we’re struggling for momentum. It’s not helped by some oddly out-of-sync cartoonish characterisations of Henry’s wasteful and flamboyant brother William and his doltish brother the aforementioned Robert.
As Henry, Toby W. Davies gives a superb performance that carries us with him through the rage of battle, the pain of loss and the guilt of regret. He’s matched for quality onstage by Greg Barnett’s threatening presence as Robert de Belleme (a cruel nobleman who pops up wherever there’s power or influence to be gained) and Georgie Fellowes as Henry’s wife as well as a peasant lady whose abuse drives much of the king’s guilt. All this is set in an imposing stage constructed over the altar of St. Paul’s, designed by Sarah Jane Booth and lit effectively by Michael Brenkley.
First staged this year in June in the ruins of Reading Abbey as part of the Finding Reading Festival it really is a smart piece of work that connects the audience to an under-explored part of the area’s (and country’s) past. Henry I’s legacy may not be as visible or discussed as those that succeeded him as ruler over the centuries but this work shows his influence still echoes down to us and the story surrounding him can prove fascinating, instructive and engaging for a modern audience.
Runs until 22 July 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Thrilling, engaging history
