Bard in the Botanics festival – Glasgow Botanic Gardens
(festival runs with different productions until 29th July)
REVIEWED BY RACHEL FARRIER
4****
The theme of this year’s Bard in the Botanics festival in Glasgow’s beautiful botanic gardens is ‘a fault in our stars’, with the first two productions in the line up being Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (outdoors) and Henry IV (an amalgamation of Henry IV parts 1 and 2, performed in the Kibble glass house).
I arrived at this production of Henry IV – directed by Gordon Barr – feeling somewhat abashed that as an English graduate, I nevertheless had very little clue about the plays, or the historical period which they illustrate. It did mean, however, that I had no pre-conceptions about how the play(s) have traditionally been interpreted and staged. Even from this vantage point though, it seemed ambitious to effectively stage 2 plays with a cast of only four men, in 2 hours and 15 minutes. And yet, the tiny cast do succeed in telling a tale that echos down the centuries, with an uncanny resonance to current events: an elderly King, troubled and disappointed by the wild and dishonourable behaviour of his son and heir, Prince Hal, dealing with a nation that is fractious and struggling to maintain its borders..
Stephen Clyde as a late stand-in to the role of King Henry, still has the script in his hand, and yet conveys the heavy and lonely burden of the monarch, seeking to lead with strength and yet plagued by the weight of decision-making and increasingly poor health.
Sam Stopford plays the lad-about-town Prince Hal with an energy and humour which couples brilliantly with Alan Steele’s magnificent Falstaff – a performance which absolutely steals the show: by turns a Fagan-like wise cracking rogue who nimbly talks himself in and out of trouble, riotously and wilfully leading Prince Hal astray at every opportunity, whilst also depicting affection and enormous humour. The very intimate setting of the Kibble glass house, with the actors using a ‘corridor’ stage in between audience rows which are inches away from the action, allowed Steele to draw the audience into his spell-binding performance, brilliantly creating a sympathy for this character.
Johnny Panchaud puts in a serious shift playing an astounding array of characters – as Hal’s partner in crime Ned (an amalgamation of several characters in the original script), he and Stopford convey the animated, chaotic and pushing-the-boundaries nature that can characterise young male friendship. Moments later Panchaud pivots to the serious, combative rebel, Henry Hotspur – two characters amongst a huge range which Panchaud admirably portrays. The fight between Hal and Hotspur (directed by Robin Hellier) which ends in the latter’s death was powerful and impressive, especially so given the very limited size of the stage and proximity to the audience. This proximity is both wonderfully engaging and at times frustrating for the audience – if the action was happening at the other end of the corridor-like stage, it was sometimes hard to hear lines and therefore keep up with the plot. The denoument of the production, which hurriedly brings us to the close of Henry IV part 2, and a reformed Prince Hal’s elevation to King and rejection of his old friend Falstaff, feels rushed and therefore somewhat lacking in sincerity. That aside, this is an enjoyable and innovative production which deserved the warm reception it received from its audience last night.