Alanna Mclean, Sydney Morning Herald
June 16, 2014
The setting seems to be a battered school bomb shelter in 1940s’ London, where students are given Shakespeare to distract them from what is going on outside. This becomes much more than a setting. The resulting tensions and the physicality of the performances deeply support the play’s meanings.
Enough of Richard II and Henry IV is slipped into the opening to explain just why young king Henry (Michael Sheasby), heir to a father whose claim to the throne was questionable and fresh from a youth misspent with the likes of Sir John Falstaff (Keith Agius), might be keen to fight in France.
Agius is also the cardiganed teacher briskly hauling the shell shocked students into classroom play reading mode, sorting an argument with a smart one by pushing her to look up the information and putting the Salic Law argument for Henry’s right to the throne of France up on the chalk board with maps and diagrams. There are reasons why he will later be more distant but his performance here, and as the Chorus, quickly and delightfully establishes the schoolroom ethos working under pressure. […continued]
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