Henry V is a dangerous play, a play for spin doctors and politicians. It can be made to bend with the winds of the time, most famously in Olivier's 1944 film version when it became a piece of morale-boosting propaganda. In the current climate, it is impossible to watch this Hal trying to understand his archbishop's spurious arguments for legitimate claim on France and certain war without thinking of a nation being given a blast of Tony Blair's persuasive powers.
The production does not push this angle, which could be seen as a missed trick. Tricksiness, however, is not in the Northern Broadsides' vocabulary. Barrie Rutter's direction is plain but satisfying and his production intimate and robust, never losing sight of the fact that it is spinning a yarn. Most of all, it never allows the audience to forget that this is theatre, a wonderful make-believe. Rutter himself plays the Chorus with a twinkle in his eye, a trusty guide who effortlessly takes the audience on an imaginative journey in which a tiny circular space in a dank former mill is suddenly a French battlefield.
This is a play about transformations: a boy into a man, a man into a king, enmity to possible love (the wooing scene between the bluff Henry and the enchanting French princess is a delight). It is also about the transformations that can occur when an audience sits in the dark and imagines together. Shakespeare never wrote more directly about the alchemy of live performance than he does in this play, and this production is infused with that spirit.
Conrad Nelson's Henry is no cut-out hero, but a man struggling to find himself and desperately wanting, to do the right thing. Like all the other performances here it is strong, direct and feels scrupulously honest. It is acting without the fancy show-off bits, and you can't help warming to it. Rutter's production sometimes lacks pace, and it will be interesting to see how it plays on tour in other possibly less sympathetic spaces. But there is something true and tender at the heart here that makes me think it will do just fine.
· Until March 8. Box office: 01422 255266. Then touring to Warwick, Kingston upon Thames, Stoke, Scarborough, Bradford and around Britain until June 5.
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