Pericles (Series 7 Episode 2)

First Transmitted 8th December 1984

Mike Gwilym and Amanda Redman are lost in the Mediterranean in Shakespeare's rambling epic

Director: David Jones

Cast: Mike Gwilym (Pericles), Edward Petherbridge (Gower), Juliet Stevenson (Thaisa), Amanda Redman (Marina), Norman Rodway (Cleon), Annette Crosbie (Dionyza), Patrick Godfrey (Helicanus), Patrick Ryecart (Lysimachus), Patrick Allen (Simonides), Clive Swift (Cerimon), Trevor Peacock (Boult), Toby Salamn (Pandar), Lula Kaye (Bawd), Nick Brimble (Leonine), John Woodvine (Antiochus), Edita Brychta (Antiochus’ daughter), Gordon Gostelow (Fisherman), John Bardon (Lord/Fisherman/Sailor), Christopher Ravenscroft (Knight/Gentleman) 

With this adaptation of Pericles, the series moves well and truly into the ephemera of the completed works. Pericles is now widely accepted as a collaboration between Shakespeare and the pamphleteer George Wilkins. Wilkins contributed large chunks of the first two acts, with Shakespeare believed to have polished those and written the remaining three acts. This makes it rather like reading a book written in collaboration by John Grisham and Salman Rushdie. 

Pericles itself is a rather strange play and I’m not sure this, at times painfully long, adaptation completely gets to grips with it. Again, completeness is probably the enemy here: a braver production would have hacked much of Acts 1 and 2, especially as the story (proper) doesn’t actually begin until Act 3. The downside of this is that it would have reduced Pericles himself into a Cymbeline-like character, but as he is hardly the most enthralling personality ever shown on the stage, this arguably would have been no great loss.

Acts 1 and 2 meander from episodic adventure to episodic adventure, with Pericles visiting a dizzying array of different locations around the Mediterranean. The opening acts concern his unearthing incest in Antioch, returning to Tyre only to flee assassins, then sailing to Tarsus where he saves a city from starvation. He is then shipwrecked on Pentapolis where (disguised as a penniless knight) he wins a joust, the respect of King Simonedes and the love of his daughter Thaisa. Written out like that it should be compelling, but (certainly in the production) the action is terminally dull. Poorly shaped characters speak at each other rather than engaging in active conversation, and the constant switches of location and story line prevent us from growing attached to the characters or interested in their fates. Similarly, Jones introduces far too many minute-filling interpolations, including a never-ending dance at Pentapolis. The Antioch scenes do use slow zooms and long shots well to demonstrate both the isolation of Pericles and his danger from the incestuous King and his daughter, but this isn’t enough to make it dynamic or especially interesting.

By contrast, the second half of the production (and I felt this even before checking who wrote what!) is both far pacier and much more focused. Thaisa is presumed to have died in childbirth while at sea and her tomb cast into the sea (it washes up on Ephesus and luckily she turns out to be fine!). Pericles leaves his newborn daughter Marina in Tarsus (for reasons never really explained) and doesn’t see her for 16 years. After that time, Dionyza (wife of the ruler of Tarsus) arranges for Marina to be murdered – but she is kidnapped by pirates before the deed is done and sold to a brothel in Mytilene. There she keeps her purity by the virtue of her virtue and becomes famous. Pericles, believing her dead, eventually arrives in Mytilene and there is a great reconciliation, before a vision sends him to Ephesus for a second reconciliation with his wife. Far from the bitty and uninvolving events of Acts 1 and 2, with their constantly revolving series of characters and locations, the second half of the show introduces a consistent set of characters and four clear locations, each with a distinctive purpose.

So this is a production that inherits and falls victim to the weaknesses of the original material. Jones’ direction also declines to introduce much pace to the production. We’ve already mentioned the long dance scene, but that’s not even the worst offender. A good ten minutes is given over to Cerimon’s waking of Thaisa from the dead – a prolonged wordless sequence largely spent watching Cerimon rub Thaisa’s wrists. Any sense of urgency about saving a life is missing completely. Too often, the pace drains out of the production. This also isn’t helped by Edward Petherbridge’s sing-song performance as the narrator Gower – beautifully spoken as the semi-Irish lilt Petherbridge chooses might be, it lacks a real dynamism, meaning Gower’s regular interpolations frequently slow the production down. It’s a shame as, when the plot really gets going, and particularly once Amanda Redman’s Marina arrives, – there is a lot of merit and interest here – it just consistently seems to get lost.

What Jones and his design team do do well is to make each of the play’s myriad locations visually distinctive. Each location has its own style and colour scheme, meaning that, in those parts of the play that move swiftly from place to place, the viewer always knows where they are and where the characters we’re watching are from. Tyre, Pericles’s home, uses cooler blues and marbled, dark hallways. Antioch is a sandy, robed, yellowing place with shady glens. Tarsus has classic Eastern architecture with white robes. Pentapolis is a grand Greek interior. Ephesus has a real sense of heat, sandy and white. Mytiline a more brownstone residential city. The visuals of each location, and the clothing of its inhabitants, makes each immediately clear – despite the whirligig plot you are never confused by it.

Our six locations (from top left): Antioch, Tyre, Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus and Mytilene

The Gower narrative sections are also skilfully illustrated to add a bit of visual interest . Petherbridge’s delivery may not be the most lively or engaging, but the events he relates are frequently played out behind him in delicately staged dumb shows by the actors. This instantly makes sections of the play that could otherwise be quite dry into something a little more dynamic and interesting to watch. Petherbridge is also often introduced into the scenes immediately before his narrative, in the background of the shot, to tie Gower a bit more into the action as an omniscient chorus or narrator. But too often these Gower interludes only really slow down the action rather than enlighten it (at one point the character even apologises for speaking at such great length) – and I’m not sure the production gets around this much.

When the production allows its narrative to have a bit more momentum, it also manages to carry an impressive amount of emotional heft. The imagined death of Thaisa in a storm at sea is movingly presented and draws some fine performances – it’s easily Mike Gwilym’s most effective moment. Similarly the build towards the reunion between Marina and Pericles is both very well staged – an effective intermixing of POV shots and close-ups – and draws the viewer into the relationship between the two characters. The second reunion between Pericles and Thaisa carries slightly less weight – but this is largely the fault of the play rather than the production.

In fact the plotline following the adult Marina is very well done indeed. This is also in large measure due to Amanda Redman’s excellent performance in the role. Marina is a very difficult part to play – a woman so pure, innocent and perfect that even in the role of prostitute she is able to persuade men to renounce lechery. On paper, it’s a character largely devoid of dramatic interest or tension. However, Redman brings a great deal of intelligence, determination and cunning to the role: Marina has a huge strength of character and is never the victim in the play. She understands the situation she is in, and Redman plays her as a woman with a shrewd and fast judge of character, swiftly able to identify strengths and weaknesses of the person she is talking to and to adjust her approach to manipulate them effectively. Far from a sweet flowery innocence, you get a sense of a woman who understands the world extremely well and how to get what she wants out of it. Redman turns a reactive near-victim into the most effective and proactive character in the play.

It’s a performance that really motors the play – and it fills a void that Mike Gwilym isn’t quite able to do in the first half. Pericles is part wanderer, part romantic maverick – Gwilyn doesn’t quite have the charisma and dynamism as a performer that the part demands. As an actor he is very well spoken and fiercely intelligent; he makes Pericles instantly believable as the strong king and decisive ruler, but he doesn’t quite convince as the swaggering adventurer who can win Thaisa’s heart, or the chance taker who inadvertently unmasks covert incest in the Antioch plotline. Gwilym just isn’t quite magnetic enough as a leading man to carry the first half of the drama – you keep wanting a little more life and energy from him. His line readings are beautiful, but he’s not the romantic lead the part needs to be. 

A young Juliet Stevenson is impressive as the naïve and tender Thaisa, her intelligence as an actor (similar to Redman) adding a confidence and sexiness to a character who, on paper, is potentially quite bland. Stevenson has a real breathless quality in her performance. Jones and his designers work hard to give her and Pericles a complementary appearance late on. She is saddled with the dull staging of her recovery-from-illness scene, but brings  her now-established excellence as a performer. A large part of the impact of the final resolution comes from her quiet emotion.

The rest of the cast is a wonderful who’s-who of players from earlier in the series – it’s actually very nice to see them all again! Most of them are in cameo roles but produce excellent work. Norman Rodway brings a sharpness and animation to Cleon – later collapsing into a sense of being trapped and powerless after his wife’s actions. Annette Crosbie as his wife Dionyza manages to make the character’s bizarre sudden transformation from caring mother to murderous evil aunt fairly logical – she creates a decent spark of bitterness and a clear sign of insecurity early in Dionyza. Patrick Godfrey makes Helicanus a stand-up guy. Patrick Allen is a playfully gruff Simonedes. Trevor Peacock is surprisingly quite funny (considering the series’ track record with comedy) as whorehouse employee Boult. Clive Swift is saddled with the worst part as Cerimon, but does a decent job. Special mention must also be made of Patrick Ryecart, here cast much more effectively as the rakish Lysimachus than he ever was as Romeo.

For the new cast, there are fewer standouts. John Woodvine makes a good impression as the regal, cruel and controlling Antiochus – these scenes have some decent tension in them, drily handled as the Antioch section of the production is. Nick Brimble gives a decent turn as reluctant assassin Leonine. For the rest of the production, a number of the supporting roles use a small company of 5-6 actors. This makes for an interesting rotation of actors but I’m not quite sure if there is any particular reason for it within the world of the production, in the way that (say) the Henry VI productions used doubling. Here I suspect it was to cut a few costs, but when you have a decent-enough company it’s nice to see them rotating through various lords, fishermen, knights and gentlemen.

David Jones draws out some good performances in some decent settings, to create a version of the play that (eventually) has a real sense of story and a genuine emotional force to it. The problem is that he is hamstrung for too long with the flaws of the actual play. He often fails to make strengths out of the play’s itinerant structure, at some points making it worse by allowing the pace to drop and introducing overlong sequences, such as dances or medical cures. But when the production reaches a single consistent story – and introduces and explores its principal characters – it starts to come to life. It takes too long to get there, but it handles some of the play’s problems well and although it fails to bring the first half to life it still manages to create some emotional force and engagement by its end. 

Conclusion

This is a decent production of a very difficult play, with some very strong moments and some good performances, in particular from Amanda Redman who steals the show as Marina. However, there are some weaknesses, often in the pacing which too frequently slows down to accommodate time-consuming “set piece” moments that add very little indeed to the plot. Mike Gwilym also lacks a certain charisma that the title role needs in order to really bring the character (and the play) to life. But despite some flaws, the second half effectively stages the story of the play and eventually lead to a reconciliation scene that is quite moving. Some moments of wit and humour lighten the tone as well. While this is not a perfect production, it’s not a perfect play – and this is a pretty good stab at bringing it to life, far superior to Jones’ previous offering in the series, The Merry Wives of Windsor.

NEXT TIME: Robert Lindsay and Cheri Lunghi bicker and fall in love in Much Ado About Nothing.

Guest Post: Henry VI Parts 1-3

Yorkists and Lancastrians square off. Just another Manic Monday.

Well, you've read me bang on about Henry VI so it's about time someone else got in on the act. So I pass the blog torch over to my wife Cate, who had the pleasure (pressure) of watching the whole trilogy with me (start to finish!). So let's here the views of someone who doesn't always share my love for the creaky sets, slow pace and grandstanding acting of the BBC from the 1970s. Over to you Cate!

As a historian, I confess I’m often not a fan of Shakespeare’s history plays – I just can’t detach from the glaring historical errors and view them as fiction, particularly not since Shakespeare’s version has often over-written reality in the general consciousness. As a fervent Ricardian, I have even greater problems with his Wars of the Roses plays – seeing Shakespeare’s Richard of Gloucester gleefully murdering people at a time when the real Richard was a child of eight makes my teeth grind every time.

The Henry plays also have several substantial chunks which I feel could be cut entirely with no great loss to world literature. I get that Jack Cade is terribly thematic, but blimey he’s dull – and do we really need all that French action in Part 1? And – shameless personal prejudice – I’m also much less tolerant of outdated production values than Ali is! So really I ought to have hated these films, but in the end I found a lot to admire. The historical-pedant side of my brain couldn’t be stopped from screaming periodically, but the theatre-nerd part thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the stage-craft.

The slavish literalism of many of the previous films had been almost entirely done away with – no painstakingly constructed interiors or (still worse) trips out to film in a forest here. Intelligently tackling the sweeping nature of the plot, an abstract set was used not only to cover everything from English prison cells to French battlefields, but also to communicate and reflect the deterioration of the realm itself – fading gradually from hopeful primary colours in Part 1 into faded, muddy tones, to finally a bleak monochrome with sooty timbers and blackened armour standing out against a melancholic snowfall. Brilliantly, the costumes evolved in a mirroring fashion through the three plays. Not only did they echo the degeneration in colour palette – fading from the cheery pastels and bold primary tones of medieval illuminations into grim, scruffy tones of black and grey – but the styles evolved as well. 

By the time the saga concluded, the action had passed into the hands of a rougher, more brutal generation, corrupted by (or taking advantage of) the civil war and absence of authority around them: and accordingly, the ornate, brightly coloured and rather cumbersome costumes of the early players had been replaced by dark, brigand-like outfits cobbled together from rough armour, headbands and an awful lot of weaponry, solely designed for maximum effectiveness in a fight. By the middle of Part 3, we hadn’t seen a splash of colour in a long time, and the sudden rush of blues and silvers when the action moves to the French court, or the blood-red of Lancastrian banners at Towton, was a visual jolt.  

The filming too took a leap forward imaginatively. I enjoyed the trick of actors delivering their asides slyly into the camera, making the viewer complicit in their schemes and plots. Still more impressive was the effective use of stylized tableaux and sequences – the outstanding ones for me being Talbot’s last stand and the moment where mirrors were used to create a huge, synchronized, almost mythical-looking army from about three actual actors at Towton. 

The performances, though, were a mixed bag. In the lead roles, I very much enjoyed Peter Benson as the gentle and ineffectual King Henry – he managed to somehow be both hopeless and endearing at the same time. He also had a remarkable gift for making you stop noticing him right in the middle of a scene, fading away to the background while your attention was caught by more strident characters. It was a generous performance, as well as an accomplished one, allowing others to constantly seize the centre stage. On the other hand, from her first entrance I loathed Julia Foster as Queen Margaret – strident, grating and stroppy, she lacked the range to tackle either the romantic Suffolk scenes or her early subtler manipulation of Henry. In her hands, Margaret was a bully and a scold, without vulnerability, guile or complexity. All of this was particularly frustrating since Margaret is one of Shakespeare’s best roles for women – there are enough plays out there where women only get to play one or two emotions, to see a multi-faceted role like this reduced to a one-note caricature was painful.

Elsewhere in the cast, it was a similar story. While Bernard Hill made a charismatic and watchable York, and Brian Protheroe was good as a shallow Edward of March, Mark Wing-Davey failed to summon the inflated pride that would make Warwick pivot on a sixpence over nothing more than a thwarted marriage alliance and suddenly swear allegiance to the woman he’d spent the last 11 hours of drama fighting, and Ron Cook as Richard of Gloucester failed to convince as a villain who could smile, and murder while he smiled. But perhaps I’m being unfair on that last one. Like I said at the beginning, I’m never going to love Shakespeare’s most enduring piece of character assassination.

And with that, I’ll conclude my guest appearance on the blog!

Henry VI Part 2 (Series 5 Episode 4)

First transmitted 9th January 1983

Bernard Hill's revolt causes chaos at the court in Henry VI Part Two

Cast: John Benfield (1^st 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/2^nd 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.