A charismatic leader is locked into a love-hate relationship with his fiscally prudent chancellor; but, having rashly promoted him, he encourages his loyal entourage to destroy him. Not for nothing does the mind turn to diverting thoughts of Blair and Brown while watching Jean Anouilh's intellectually vacuous piece of boulevard history.
Anouilh's play is based on one, endlessly repeated idea: that Henry II was plagued by a homoerotic, stonily unrequited passion for his old hawking, horsing and whoring chum, Thomas Becket. Having pinched his mistress and rashly elevated him first to the chancellorship and then to Canterbury, Henry is confronted by the awkward fact that Becket puts the honour of God before that of his king. So, in a rage born of thwarted love, Henry licenses his barons to kill the unyielding Becket.
It matters little that Anouilh plays fast and loose with history: Shakespeare did as much in Richard III. Less easy to forgive is that Anouilh's characters are far less interesting than their factual counterparts. The discrepancies between historical fact and Anouilh's fiction are underscored by this irredeemably vulgar adaptation by Frederic and Stephen Raphael, in which Becket is characteristically referred to as "an insolent little shit".
In the past the play has survived largely as a vehicle for two equally-matched stars: Christopher Plummer and Eric Porter in 1960, Robert Lindsay and Derek Jacobi in 1991. But here there is precious little contest as Jasper Britton's Henry sweeps all before him. Playing the text as written, Britton turns Henry into a regal counterpart of his recent Petruchio, veering between fierce temper tantrums and moments of contradictory tenderness.
The problem is that Dougray Scott's stolid Becket offers little explanation as to what prompts such unexpected love: all I saw in his performance was a display of canny Scottish reserve. And, although John Caird's production is efficiently ordered and filled with sombre choral chants, the medieval mood is constantly shattered by an anachronistic translation liberally spattered with four-letter words.
"Appalling treatment of women!" cried a lady behind me; but I was equally appalled by the play's cavalier treatment of history and its dramatic inertia.
· Until February 12. Box office:0870 901 3356.
