I'd rather watch Shakespeare's two Henry IV plays than almost anything else in the canon. And Michael Attenborough's new production, part of the RSC's This England season, fully grasps the distinction between the two parts: this second play, in contrast to the invigorating first, is a prolonged meditation on time, death, age and the mutability of human affairs.
You see this most vividly in Desmond Barrit's Falstaff. A limping, white-haired, bearded figure he knows his end is near and is determined to make the most of it. But there is nothing sentimental about this Falstaff: he is predatory, parasitic and quite prepared, when Hal becomes king, to make the law his plaything. Barrit's achievement is to make you see the necessity of his rejection even while regretting it. The only quality missing was the racking awareness of his own childlessness which made Robert Stephens's Falstaff so memorable.
This production is at its best in those unforgettable scenes, the high watermark of Shakespearean realism, in Justice Shallow's Gloucestershire orchard. The rustic recruiting is very funny with Wart played as a bent-double figure who keels over at the slightest touch. Benjamin Whitrow's Shallow is a toothless local bigwig wrapped in a world of self-delusion. But my particular delight was Peter Copley's Silence, a spryly mischievous elder rolling his eyes heavenward at Shallow's Latinate pretensions and, when under the influence, breaking into song like a delirious thrush.
There are times when you feel this wide-ranging epic is cramped by the space: it seems odd that William Houston's Hal has to make his post- coronation entrance through a cluster of trees. And, good as Houston and David Troughton's spiritually anguished Henry IV are, their final bedside encounter is played as if they were addressing a public meeting rather than each other.
But, in a strong cast, Clifford Rose's poker-backed Lord Chief Justice, David Killick's militant Archbishop of York and Danielle Tilley's exceptionally fetching Doll Tearsheet all take the eye. Doll's youth stands in poignant contrast to the sense of mortality and decline that threads its way through this threnodic masterpiece.
Until October 7. Box office: 01789 403403.
