Upstairs at the Gatehouse – until 8 June 2025
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
The Crooked Billets present Peter Mottley’s wonderful double bill of plays focussing on the seedier characters from Shakespeare’s Henry IV and V which create an earthier, more dangerous picture of life in Henry’s England. Both plays are monologues, expertly and entertainingly delivered by Arthur Drury and Gareth David Lloyd and directed skilfully by Paul Olding.
A boy actor (Arthur Drury) is getting ready to perform in Shakespeare’s new play – Henry V. As he dresses, he talks about life as a boy actor, wistfully describing how he had a voice like a nightingale and played Juliet and Rosalind. Now that his voice has broken, he is deemed fit only to play the middle-aged women so is donning the costume of Mistress Nell Quickly. As he dresses, the boy relates his own mother’s life to Quickly’s. Brought up in the tavern where his mother worked, he watched her taking clients upstairs, being beaten and abused until the arrival of Lemuel: “of all my dads – he was my favourite.” Unfortunately, like Pistol, war takes him away.
Playing the younger women has made the boy realise that life is not easy for women – especially those not born to money, and Drury effortlessly captures the mixture of despair, disgust, acceptance and overwhelming love the boy feels for his mother and his favourite dad, beginning to realise and understand the sacrifices and compromises they had to make just to survive in a brutal and unforgiving London. Drury’s thoughtful and humane performance brings Mottley’s empathetic writing to life brilliantly.
The second play sees Nell Quickly’s husband, Pistol (Gareth David Lloyd) sitting in a tavern seven years after the battle of Agincourt. Pistol is still a blowhard, but the events of that French campaign have scarred him mentally. As he gets more drunk, his bitterness towards Henry V spews out. Unable to forgive “young Henry” for his abandonment of Falstaff and the Cheapside companions of his wayward youth, Pistol spits out Shakespeare’s line “I know thee not” as he recounts Falstaff’s death and the execution of Nym and Bardolph for theft in France. Pistol’s view of the French campaign as one of the grunts rather than the lofty heights of the nobility is visceral and horrifying. Pistol rants about the stupidity of his friends, getting killed for not following his rules for plundering efficiently and of the stupidity of the nobles leading the war – following the rules of war no matter how many lives are lost needlessly. The descriptions of the horrors of the army dying from dysentery and the mad bloodlust and butchery of Agincourt are interspersed with sarcastic impressions of Henry giving inspirational speeches. Gareth David Lloyd is phenomenal conveying the constantly shifting and confused emotions of Pistol – heartbreakingly devastated at the death of the young boy who had come to France with him, and full of bitter hatred for Henry. David Lloyd portrays the torment of PTSD brilliantly. The madness in his eyes as he describes the antics of the archers is something to behold, as is the effort to bring himself back to “good old Pistol” as he realises that he is being watched. An unforgettable portrayal of the true horrors of war.
Before Nell/ After Agincourt is an unmissable double bill. Insightful and clever writing performed with heart and searing intensity.