30 October 2014, The Tablet

Cell-block Shakespeare


Henry IV, Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London; Love’s Labour’s Lost / Love’s Labour’s Won, RSC, Stratford-on-Avon

 
It’s an unusual thrill to find two current Shakespearean productions that are, for different reasons, unrecognisable: Love’s Labour’s Won will be a title unknown to most theatre-goers, while few are likely ever to have imagined seeing Sir John Falstaff played by a woman. Indeed, Phyllida Lloyd’s Henry IV could have gone further and renamed itself Henrietta IV. This is the middle section of a planned trio of all-female Shakespeares, the conceit being that the plays are being performed by the inmates and staff of a high-security women’s prison.The two parts of the play are thinned into a brisk two hours without interval, which focuses the action on the relationships that Clare Dunne’s cocaine-snorting, football-loving Prince Hal has with his stern actual
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