- Radio Times
- Review by:
- David Butcher
In the second of the BBC’s sequence of history plays, Rory Kinnear’s Bolingbroke has aged to become Jeremy Irons’s embittered Henry IV and now faces a rebellion of his own.
Irons is wonderfully grim and ill-tempered as Henry, forever invoking the “majesty” that he seems notably short on. Henry is almost peripheral in his own play: while he mourns the failings of his party-loving son Hal, the latter takes centre stage, binge-drinking with Falstaff at the Boar’s Head.
It’s here the adaptation takes off, with Simon Russell Beale as a nicely two-faced, craven Falstaff. The charade where he and Hal take turns to role-play as the king has a sharply poignant pay-off with the “Banish not him” speech and Hal’s cruel riposte.
Joe Armstrong as fiery rebel Hotspur has never been better and Julie Walters makes the most of her role as Mistress Quickly. Scenes are freely cut, shuffled and cleverly reimagined. The adaptation takes time to cast its spell but the final battle scenes in the snow and mist are worth sticking around for.
About this programme
King Henry is having an uneasy reign, troubled by guilt over the way he won the crown from his cousin Richard II and constantly defied by his son and heir Prince Hal, who spends most of his time carousing in Mistress Quickly's tavern with the cowardly knight Sir John Falstaff and his ne'er-do-well companions. However, when the prince's rival, Henry Hotspur, leads a rebellion against the king, the time comes for him to step up to the mark and join his father in battle. Jeremy Irons stars in the second of this cycle of Shakespeare history plays, with Tom Hiddleston (Thor), Simon Russell Beale, Julie Walters, Joe Armstrong and Maxine Peake.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Henry IV
- Jeremy Irons
- Falstaff
- Simon Russell Beale
- Prince Hal
- Tom Hiddleston
- Mistress Quickly
- Julie Walters
- Northumberland
- Alun Armstrong
- Hotspur
- Joe Armstrong
- Poins
- David Dawson
- Kate Percy
- Michelle Dockery
- Bardolph
- Tom Georgeson
- Worcester
- David Hayman
- Westmoreland
- James Laurenson
- Mortimer
- Harry Lloyd
- Doll Tearsheet
- Maxine Peake
- Glendower
- Robert Pugh
- Lady Mortimer
- Alex Clatworthy
- Peto
- Ian Conningham
- Douglas
- Stephen McCole
- Lancaster
- Henry Faber
- Vernon
- Mark Tandy
- Coleville
- Dominic Rowan
- Blunt
- Jolyon Coy
- Francis
- John Heffernan
- Sheriff
- John Ashton
- Bracy
- Conrad Asquith
- Hotspur's servant
- Jim Bywater
Crew
- Adapted By
- Richard Eyre
- Director
- Richard Eyre
- Producer
- Rupert Ryle-Hodges
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