First transmitted 9th January 1983 |
Bernard Hill's revolt causes chaos at the court in Henry VI Part Two |
Cast: John Benfield (1st Murderer/Ship’s Master),
Peter Benson (Henry VI/Priest), Antony Brown (Walter Whitmore/Alexander Iden),
David Burke (Gloucester/Dick the Butcher), Michael Byrne (John Hume/Pirate
Captain), Anne Carroll (Duchess of Gloucester) Paul Chapman (Suffolk), Ron Cook
(Richard Plantagenet/Peasant), Arthur Cox (Thomas Horner/Lord Clifford), David
Daker (Buckingham), Brian Deacon (Somerset/Smith the Weaver), Tenniel Evans (Salisbury/Clerk),
Derek Farr (Lord Say), Julia Foster (Queen Margaret), Derek Fuke (Simpcox/George
Bovis), Alex Guard (Second Prentice/Michael), Bernard Hill (York), Paul Jesson
(John Holland/George Plantagenet), Pat Keen (Margery Jourdain), Gabrielle Lloyd
(Simpcox’s Wife), Oengus MacNamara (Young Clifford), Frank Middlemass (Cardinal
Beaufort), Trevor Peacock (Sheriff/Jack Cade), Brian Protheroe (Edward
Plantagenet), David Pugh (Peter Thump/2nd Murderer), Mark Wing-Davey
(Warwick), Peter Wyatt (Sir Humphrey Stafford)
Director: Jane Howell
The great thing about the Henry VI plays is they really lend themselves to being produced as
a complete series, in a way that the more stand alone Richard II, Henry IV Part 1
and Henry V don’t. Not only do they
have a consistent cast throughout (and reasonably consistent characterisation),
but the plotlines of each play feed naturally into the next. Precisely because
these plays lack the thematic complexity and structure of the later (greater)
plays, which build to satisfying conclusions within their running times, these
epic dramas create a single twelve hour sweep. So while the plays would make
little sense performed alone, as a whole they can pack quite a wallop.
Which is definitely what happens here as this second episode
in the “series” picks up almost exactly where the previous episode left off:
Suffolk has arrived with Margaret, Beaufort and Gloucester still hate each
other, York is still planning nationwide domination and Henry is still
painfully useless. Our setting remains the same, but (not surprising,
considering the slaughter that ended Part
One) the playground location is now distinctly bashed and faded, the
colours a shadow of what they were before, the wood and paintwork chipped and
fading. It’s still the exact same set, but darker, grimier and more imposing,
as if with the death of the noble Talbot and his son some of the light and hope
has gone out of the world.
The costuming of is also darker, with the bright colours and
decorative medieval flourishes of the armour and cloaks largely gone in favour
of a browner, more muted colour pallet that gets darker as the play progresses.
By the end of the play, as York’s army arrives dressed in stormtrooper black
costumes, it’s clear the long night is coming to the world of the play. This
faded effect masterfully contrasts the atmosphere of both the production and
the play, with this middle chapter of the trilogy being the sudden breath
before the deep plummet into civil war. There are some lovely hints of this
destruction to come: not least in a scene where York’s young children (two of
them future kings) gleefully knock over skittles decorated to resemble the
lords at Henry’s court.
The atmosphere of the first half of this production is
markedly different from the proceeding part. Alongside the subdued colours, the
performance style of the actors is similarly calmer, cooler and more
restrained. The glances towards the camera are considerably reduced, with the
actors going for a far straighter style, avoiding many of the little touches of
comedy that were seen in Part One.
This is partly as well due to the enormous sense of dignity that David Burke
brings to essentially well-meaning Gloucester, but also an attempt by Howell to
give the production a change of pace – a relax from the frenticism of Part One and a contrast to the violence
to come – to allow the audience to breathe, but also to give a sense of
foreboding over the kingdom itself. It is a bit of a jerk after the fast pace
of the previous play – and partly driven by the nature of the writing of the
play itself, with its longer court sequences – but it works very effectively
once seen as part of the overall piece.
The other element that Howell brings out extremely well in
the play is the growing sense of menace from the people themselves – a menace
that will explode once Jack Cade fills the leadership void left by Henry and
the other lords. The first half has moments of darkness and corruption
simmering throughout. Michael Byrne is central to these moments (another
inspired piece of doubling). First he appears as corrupt priest John Hume,
chairing a perverse and twisted witch ceremony for Gloucester’s wife (an
entertainment he gleefully confides to the camera is all a set-up anyway).
Later he appears again as the leader of a punkish group of pirates, like the
lost boys on speed, presiding over a mock-trial of Suffolk like a minister of
Hell.
But that’s nothing compared to the people themselves. Throughout
the opening half of the production, the people are quick to follow a convincing
leader and always ready to resort to violence at the slightest prompting. The
groundwork is laid with the Simpcox scenes, with the people blindly following “the
miracle”, totally lacking the ability to appreciate the deception practised
upon them. The violence at the heart of the ordinary man grows from there: in
A2 S3 the meek Peter snaps in the “duel” with his master and beats him to
death. At the end of A2 S4, as the Duchess of Gloucester is led away, the
camera cranes up to focus on the unruly mob sadistically rejoicing in her
despair. In A3 S2 the mob charges on following Warwick and Salisbury’s lead,
even chanting their single lines in unison together – comic yes, but also
showing their essentially sheeplike nature. But the ferocity of their
aggression towards Suffolk – the atmosphere of a lynch mob shocks even him –
immediately shows their danger if harnessed. Harnessing that no-one in Henry’s
circle seem interesting in doing.
All this explodes with the arrival of Jack Cade. Trevor
Peacock plays Cade as a sadistic, grotesque version of Talbot, with all his
nobility and selfless love for England replaced with greed and a fiendish
delight in death and destruction. His Cade has all the leadership skills and rabble-rousing
abilities of Talbot – but horribly misapplied. Howell even stages his scenes as
parodies of Talbot’s inspiring speeches, with Peacock lazily clambering
monkey-like up to the heights of the stage, legs swinging down as he encourages
his men. As the violence promoted by Cade grows, Howell transposes Cade’s
grinning face over the shots of looting, murder and devastation. The violence
Cade unleashes is shockingly real – fires, book burnings, soldiers rocked back
and forth and then speared on swords, bodies mutilated, lynchings – which
serves as a real contrast to the black comedy of Cade’s attitudes (jokes about
killing lawyers and the evils of writing etc.). 
This serves to stress the bubbling current of violence that is
running throughout the kingdom, from top to bottom. Just as the lords are
brutally planning to murder each other, so the people need only the slightest
encouragement and endorsement before they are happily ripping bodies apart,
burning towns and laughingly beating a man to death. Cade’s lines acknowledging
he himself is trapped by the forward momentum of violence ring particularly
true here. Howell’s direction shows that Cade is just an opportunist at the
right place at the right time – the swiftness with which he is abandoned, yet
another indicator of the mob’s lack of loyalty and their readiness to follow
the rising sun. But it's violence from top to bottom - numerous severed heads litter scenes, like grim bookmarks.
The violence exploded by Cade is both a continuation and an
expansion of the growing reality of death from Part One. All the lords eagerly plan violent deaths for each other,
and (with the exception of a horrified Beaufort when confronted with
Gloucester’s corpse) all seem very comfortable with the consequences of their
actions. So devoid are they of any sense of loyalty and decency, that they
constantly ally themselves with long-term enemies to dispose of short-term
ones: in particular York, who happily colludes in the destruction of Gloucester
with Buckingham and Suffolk. Poor Gloucester, at the centre of much of this
conspiracy of the first half, looks as pained and bewildered by this joint
enterprise as you would expect – in particular a pained shock crosses David
Burke’s face when York (who he previously championed) turns upon him, matched
only by his pain when Henry strips him of his staff. Like sharks, the lords turn
on anyone displaying weakness – Somerset coolly avoids a fallen Suffolk,
Margaret further savages a struggling Gloucester. Is it any wonder the people
they rule over are the same? The destruction these attitudes will lead to
culminates in the final image of the play: a triumphant York and his sons
celebrate their victory in battle, leaving a depressed Salisbury – the one
decent man at court – to turn back and (in a POV shot) see the mangled corpses
littering the field of battle.
The impact of the violence and chaos Cade and later York
bring to the kingdom, seems earned precisely because the first half of the play
is delivered in a far more controlled and formal way (both in the playing and
the more traditional film making
decisions, avoiding the unusual like direct camera address). By allowing the
earlier courtroom scenes to take on a more sombre, foreboding mood – with
simmering arguments, political manoeuvrings but a slower tempo in delivery –
and encouraging the actors to stage their arguments in a more overtly
“Shakespearean” manner, with the threat of violence running underneath each
scene but only rarely allowed to escape, the tension has been effectively
screwed tight, ready to burst in Part Three.
And the violence in the final battle of St Albans is grotesque here, with
soldiers brutally murdering each other. A decision to reinforce blows
(particularly in the one-on-one battles between key characters) with slo-mo
editing and camera work does seem more than a little dated today, but the
essential impact of the brutality after the restraint of the opening (and in
contrast to the more cartoony tone of Part
One) is hugely effective.
Alongside all this excellent thematic material, Howell again
uses doubling to great effect. Antony Brown plays the destroyer of the
antagonist of the both the first half (Suffolk) and the second (Cade) as first
a scowling sinister Whitmore, then an urbane middle-class Iden. David Burke –
triumphant as the noble Gloucester in the first half – returns as Dick the
Butcher, Cade’s lieutenant, a man as cynical and destructive as Gloucester was
old fashioned and principled as Henry’s lieutenant. Arthur Cox plays the
bragging Horner who pompously boasts of York’s ascendancy, then returns as the
rigidly proud Clifford, preaching the inevitability of Henry’s permanent
ascendancy. Trevor Peacock is the most obvious doubling, his performance as
Cade a skilful “mirror universe” version of Talbot, as a charismatic thug and
murderer. Most of the rest of the cast can be spotted filling out the crowd of
Cade’s supporters. The sense of the ensemble is not only really refreshing, but
continues to allow excellent opportunities for sly commentaries on roles.
Among the rest of the cast, Peter Benson comes into his own
in this part as an outrageously weak and passive Henry, his soft-toned, almost
melodic, verse speaking perfect for a man who practically lies down like a
doormat for the rest of the court. Often filmed from above or at tight angles that zoom in and out to stress his isolation from the others, Benson is a hand-wringing child throughout this play. From his vacant smiles in A1 S1 at the loss
of France, through his starting at a trumpet call in A1 S3, he is consistently
ignored or fobbed off by his lords (Beaufort and Gloucester in A2 S1
practically talk over his peace-making attempts) he is man unable to impose
himself on anything, who only stares balefully as Gloucester is arrested. Even
in his rage against Suffolk, he comes across as a weak man, hopelessly out of
his depth. Benson is perfect at embodying this weakness with an air of sympathy
and Howell effectively places him often at the back of the frame, a puny
childlike man sitting on a throne, dwarfed by the powerful characters around
him.
The real “lead” though of Part Two is probably York, brought to life as a quiet, calm,
scheming Machiavel by Bernard Hill. Hill brings a brutish, earthy authority to
York’s “man of the people stance” while simultaneously presenting the
would-be-king as a cold snake, seething with rage and bitterness. What he also
does well is explore some of the doubt in York – a man who several times halts
and doubts the wisdom of his actions. Although on the surface a man who says
what he means, he is also full of low cunning – scheming at the destruction of
Gloucester in A1 S4 – even openly grinning to the camera at his own lack of
principle. His authoritarian air is also clear in his brow beating of Salisbury
(with physical force, at points) into siding with his plan to destroy
Gloucester.
There are of course other strong performers. Tenniel Evans
excels as Salisbury, possibly the last decent man left at court but one who is
too weak to actually stick to his principles. Frank Middlemass’ Beaufort is so
full of puffed-up pride, it’s a shock to see him deflate so quickly when
actually confronted with the results of his murderous wishes. Mark Wing-Davey’s
Warwick grows in authority and confidence. The one performance that doesn’t
quite work is Julia Foster as Queen Margaret, who comes across far too harsh,
angry and one-note throughout the opening half of the play (particularly in the
scenes where she is required to flirt with Paul Chapman’s slimy Suffolk), like
a shrill housewife rather than a woman who will dominate the war to come with
her force of personality. There is not enough softness there, and scenes such
as Suffolk’s departure suffer slightly as a result. It’s a performance that
just feels too stagy. However, it is a style that works far better for the
scenes of battle and fury that occupy the second half of the play.
But that’s one very small criticism of another outstanding
production in this sequence, which continues to bravely reinvent the rules of
the series and to shed new, and fascinating, light on these overlooked plays. Civil war is the hell ahead of the country now - Alexander Iden's horrified look at the camera speaks volumes for the deaths and destruction that this war will unleash. It's a horror that hangs over the whole production - the grip anticipation of what will come in Part Three.
Conclusion
Not quite as fun
as Part One, but packed with great
ideas, skilled performances and some wonderful moments, this both expands and
deepens the world Howell has created for this production and again draws
outstanding performances from its ensemble cast. The gear shift in tone from Part One is jarring at first (and a bit
of a shame) but an essential pause for breath in the long term scheme for the
series, and serves to highlight and give depth to the bubbling resentments that
are set to explode in the second half of the play and in the rest of the series. Definitely keeping the game up!
NEXT TIME: One
final part of Henry VI to come, this time with Ron Cook moving to the
foreground as the sinister Richard in Henry
VI Part Three.