Nothing like a ripping story decently told - I really enjoyed Nicholas Hytner's Henry IV at the National Theatre. Except for one thing. Michael Gambon.
I know this is heresy (judging by the ripple of excitement that breathed round the Olivier when he so much as stepped on to the stage, let alone the uproar when he took his bow) but I am the only one who could hear about 60 per cent of what he was saying?
We know Falstaff likes his drink and probably slurs a bit; we know that the Elizabethan tavern-argot Falstaff and his mates converse in has a brand of humour it's difficult for us to get into in the 21st century. But am I the only person who found this completely, totally and unforgivably inaudible?
I thought the diction was pretty unforgivable in As You Like It, at Wyndham's, too. The director, David Lan (of whose theatre, the Young Vic, I'm a fan) was presumably aiming at a kind of modern fleetness so the plot wouldn't get treacled up in old-fashioned declamatory verse-speaking.
But there's a balance between that and, well, gabbling, isn't there? If nothing else, it made me want to reread the play, just to catch up on the lines I'd been missing.
