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Henry V

 
Rebecca Vines Review by Rebecca Vines 4 Published: 4 Apr 2026 Royal Shakespeare Company Show Dates: 4 Apr 2026-25 Apr 2026

If Shakespeare is truly not just of an age but for all time, then it stands to reason that his plays will forever be viewed through the rotating wheel of happenstance. Thus, Henry V – both the oft-quoted play and the roistering, rousing warrior king himself – is destined to be seen through the prism of both our personal and societal views on warfare.

Henry’s speeches no longer warm the blood but trouble the mind.

Tamara Harvey’s take on the play comes at an apposite time: as one man decides to renew old hostilities and take whatever he believes himself entitled to. Simply because he can – and to heck with the acres of dead bodies strewn in his wake. Olivier gave a call to arms when the nation needed blind patriotism. Branagh gave a searing panorama on the horrors of battle. And what lies at the heart of this interpretation is emptiness, pointlessness, and a flat disbelief that we have evolved so little.

As Henry, Alfred Enoch seems a calm, dependable, rational sort of chap: already far removed from his riotous past and dismissive of his erstwhile chums. Harvey’s deconstruction of the text awards him the "O for a muse of fire" speech, which opens up a new dynamic between our young sovereign and his nascent empire-building. Originally something of a ‘get out of jail free’ card for an audience too unimaginative to conjure the vasty fields of France for themselves, here it becomes a realisation of possibility. No longer a "cockpit," we see Henry pondering whether the "O" of the coronet can hold his ambitions. This "O" becomes a repeated motif throughout: a symbol of awe but also shock. Encompassing everything yet containing nothing. A hollow crown indeed.

This is underpinned by Lucy Osborne’s huge, scaffolded set design. The storeys and multitudinous passageways might suggest the magnificence of a castle, but this is one we common folk can see straight into. And crucially, therefore, straight through. This is a fortress of metal might and sturdy rigidity, but utterly devoid of real life or comfort. It is also, as we later see, interchangeable; there is nothing new under the sun.

And it is against this bleak backdrop of assumed grandeur that Henry launches his campaign against the French. But as the ruminations on the coronet foreshadowed – and despite his apparently stolid exterior – this is fundamentally just a little boy playing with his toys. All agog for the swelling scene, but with little understanding of the heavy reckoning that will follow.

As blood spills at Harfleur and then Agincourt, the choreographic eye of Annie-Lunnette Deakin-Foster weaves creativity and dynamism into the narrative, highlighting lost life with unrelenting predictability: albeit with a gnawing penchant for traumatic physical collapse, which would make a GCSE drama candidate blush. Kate Waters’ battle scenes begin in slow motion; a dream-like, rhythmic quality creating the performative nature of this land grab. The men are ordered, elegant, purposeful: the naïve Henry’s idea of an invading army before the fact.

With the English clothed in earthy reds and yellows, and the French in a palette of murky blues and greens, it is – at the outset at least – easy enough to identify which army is which in the multi-roling cast. However, as time passes and the speed of battle pushes ever onward, the differentiation becomes less obvious, and it is harder to tell which troops are collapsing. Somewhat frustrating, but perhaps this is the point. Given the chaos of the field and Henry’s own uncertainty as to the outcome, this mishmash of bodies reduces nationality to a mere detail of existence. We are all the same when lying broken in the dirt.

And it is this filth of war which turns the calm, dependable, rational enough Henry into a man now fully prepared to break an age-old code and execute his prisoners. Whether by expedience or heredity is unimportant: he is now little more than a war criminal masquerading as a hero. For four hundred years, lauded and lionised due precisely to the poetry which now marks him as a rather different creature. Hoist with his own petard.

This cyclical, gloomily inevitable mood pervades Harvey’s vision. Henry’s famously stirring speeches may be delivered with a charm and righteous elan which galvanise his own men, but they no longer have the power to warm audience blood so much as trouble the collective mind.

It is Jamie Ballard’s spectacular Michael Williams who challenges the dulce et decorum est rhetoric, turning in both a performance and a character far more heroic than the King himself. Williams speaks for centuries of ordinary people sent out to die for a whim, fully aware they are dying for folly, yet prepared to do it anyway. This – this is nobility.

Ballard also impresses as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the feeble French King caught up in a web of diplomatic intrigue far beyond his understanding. Paul Hunter evokes a seedy little Pistol, picking his way through devastation with light-footed irreverence. And Tanvi Virmani presents a moving picture of innocence as she tries to navigate a world gone mad. Knitting the ensemble and plot together with haunting redolence is Jamie Salisbury’s achingly melancholic score.

There are few of us in 2026 – with perhaps the exception of the darkest corners of Truth Social – who would seek to celebrate needless bloodshed. And whilst the history itself may remain constant (even within the inconstancy of Shakespeare’s particular lens), our relationship to it cannot help but be coloured by the worlds in which we are living. This production understands this fragile relationship and never seeks to impose upon the text, but just lets it breathe with its own complexity and nuance. For this is a play which ends with victory but no real peace. There are only those who seek to hurt, and those who seek to heal. And there are those who seek to heal what they have hurt. And only at the close, as Henry’s legacy and stunted dynasty stretch ahead of him, does he finally realise that the rest is sadness.

Amir Nisi

Rebecca Vines

Rebecca is an acclaimed practitioner and lecturer with a renowned global practice; and is the current Drama Chairman for the board of the British and International Federation of Festivals. Rebecca began her writing career as a diarist at The Guardian newspaper, and has been reviewing theatre since 2000. Rebecca trained as a performer with the Actors Company, and has written, directed and produced critically acclaimed and sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2003.

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A reckless insult from the French Dauphin offers the perfect excuse for Henry V to declare war. But there’s a human price to pay for his pursuit of power and thousands could die at Agincourt. Henry must unite his country, defeat the French, and prove himself worthy of the crown of England. Does he have what it takes? Co-Artistic Director Tamara Harvey directs Alfred Enoch as Shakespeare’s Henry V, following on from their acclaimed collaboration on Pericles in 2024.
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