This is a four-star, almost four-hour Falstaff – a condensed version of Henry IV parts I and II that’s a luxurious feast for Ian McKellen and for audiences. Our greatest living classical actor attacks the part of the gluttonous, cowardly knight – one of the few male Shakespearean biggies he’s not previously ticked off – with relish and superb comic timing.
His fat-suited, ebulliently shambolic presence drives and dominates Robert Icke’s production, edging the debate about kingship and fatherhood between King Henry (Richard Coyle) and wayward Prince Hal (Toheeb Jimoh) to the side. Without wishing to dwell too much on the play’s other themes, mortality and ageing, it’s a remarkable feat of skill, swagger and stamina for an 84-year-old.
Icke is known for his thrilling reinventions or rewrites of classics. Here he neatly streamlines the patriarchal power struggles of part I, by turns raucous and violent, then prunes the waffling jokes and rueful diminuendo of part II – not quite ruthlessly enough. He makes clear how these plays speak to our times: they ask what it means to be a man and a monarch, and whether we should dedicate our lives to duty or pleasure.
The staging is simple: bare brick walls advance and retreat, and sweeping curtains shift us from Westminster to Northumberland to Eastcheap. Icke often uses music as an intensifier: here it’s a piecemeal soundtrack of EDM, gloomy New Wave, and a scary male soprano singing I Vow To Thee My Country and Jerusalem like a harbinger of doom.
The opening coronation of Coyle’s sour Henry is juxtaposed with a criminal orgy at the tavern of Clare Perkins’ forceful Mistress Quickly, where Jimoh’s Hal snorts amphetamines with his bum hanging out. Henry, Hal and their nemesis Hotspur (Samuel Edward-Cook), find their bodies, brains or morals poisoned by the demands of honour. Chivalry is a myth. Though Falstaff lies, steals and mutilates corpses, his gross self-interest seems appealing by contrast.
Jimoh is charismatic and interestingly volatile as Hal, Coyle impressive in the thankless titular part, and there are some lovely supporting performances, including Perkins as Quickly and Geoffrey Freshwater as Bardolph. But this is McKellen’s show, more even than it is Icke’s.
His rheumy, phlegmy Falstaff demands time and attention. He’s a shameless, conniving ruin of a man, but his response to the slaughter of the English battlefield – “give me LIFE!” – and his reaction to Hal’s rejection are full of verve and pathos. This is a substantial night out with very two substantial knights, McKellen and Falstaff. See them working together if you possibly can.
