Yesterday afternoon
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ghost_guessed and I went to the Globe to see Henry IV Part I and had a very jolly time despite the increasingly cold and wet weather.
It's a really good production with Roger Allam as Falstaff and Jamie Parker as Prince Hal. I've been to the Globe before, but as a groundling, this time we were sitting in the "posh" seats, but you still get an intimate feel to the action. I've also seen Henry IV Part 1
before, but this was the first time that I really understood why the Elizabethan audiences so loved Falstaff that he could well have become the first media franchise character and was nearly as much of a millstone round Shakespeare's neck as Sherlock Holmes was to Conan Doyle. Roger Allam's Falstaff was amoral, cowardly and a lot of a scoundrel, but he was also witty,very funny and much more full of joie de vivre in the part than Michael Gambon felt when I saw him. Unlike Matthew Macfadyen's Hal, who seemed quite disgusted with himself at times, Jamie Parker's Hal really felt as if he was enjoying his time with the low lives and genuinely found Falstaff funny. The scene where they both describe the fake robbery and Falstaff's lies gets more and more outrageous until Hal undercuts him with the truth is hilarious, but that's just one of many funny moments.
On the more serious political side of the play the consequences of Henry IV's seizure of the crown from Richard II is still having serious repercussions due to his debt to the Percy family for their assistance. Harry Hotspur (Sam Crane), in contrast to Hal, seems like the model heir but it soon becomes apparent that his hot-headedness is a big (and at times funny) liability as he insults more or less everybody, quarrels with his wife and generally behaves like a loose canon about to go off in any direction. As the alliance of Percy, Glendower and Mortimer threatens the kingdom Hal is summoned back to his father's side to defend the realm and Shakespeare uses the completely unscrupulous activities of Falstaff to have a dig at the recruiting practices of the Elizabethan militia. Cue exciting sword fighting with a duel between Hal and Hotspur, Falstaff apparently dead, though coming back to life again and claiming to have killed Hotspur, much to the bemusement of Hal and the amusement of the audience.
It was an altogether more rollicking and less doom laden production than the one I'd previously seen at the National with mummers, music, colourful costumes (the heraldry geek in me thinks all the heraldic devices worn on the battlefield were correct something the Elizabeth audience would certainly have known) and audience appreciation. As the weather got wetter and colder in the second half the cast still managed the difficult task of keeping the damp groundlings laughing and received loud applause at the end as the play ended with some energetic dancing (possibly to keep warm).
As we came out I overheard one teenage boy explaining the fact that there was a Henry IV Part 2 to his younger brother - "it's like the sequel to a film", which is about right. Obviously Shakespeare got there first with most things *g*. It was a really enjoyable afternoon and a production I was very glad to have seen, so many thanks to
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ghost_guessed for suggesting it and for her company.
We both had colds (as had most of the rest of the audience I think) and the evening before I'd been really clogged up, sniffly and on my own as J was paying one of his required insurance visits to ma-in-law's house. It would have been quite miserable had I not watched Merlin.
( Goblin's GoldCollapse )And finally y to
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selenak who is my oldest online friend, which in internet terms means we probably go back to the Ark *g*. This time last year she was kind enough to invite J and me to her birthday party in her beautiful home town of Bamberg and then she and her father very kindly showed us a bit of beautiful Franconia. Best wishes from both of us for a lovely day today (though probably slightly quieter than last year *g*).
