Jonathan
Firth who plays the title role in Katie Mitchell's Henry VI for the RSC
talks to Lit Gilbey.
One of Shakespeare's
earliest and least known plays is set for a new world fame as the Royal
Shakespeare Company gears up for its most extensive world tour ever --
a year on the road taking in South America and Sunderland, Leominster and
Los Angeles, Germany and Japan en route. Henry VI, The Battle For The Throne,
is the third play in the young playwright's Henry VI cycle, part of the
War of the Roses histories, and one of Shakespeare's least performed plays.
Katie Mitchell, directs, and after a scant seven weeks at Stratford's Other
Place, begins its mammoth trek around the globe.
Leading the
company as Henry in his RSC debut is young actor Jonathan Firth, seen most
famously on TV as wastrel made good Fred Vincey in BBC TV's multi million
pound costume drama, George Eliot's Middlemarch. And his first response
to taking a rare Shakespeare from the end of its own trilogy: it stands
up in its own right as a play very well. It is not essential to have seen
or read the other two plays to see and understand this one. Academics think
they were written out of chronological order anyway, and this was the one
that made Shakespeare's name as a young writer.'
There is plenty
of controversy surrounding it. As the first play to ever tackle the real
history of the nation there is still the argument about whether it was
one of Shakespeare's first, or Marlowe's last. 'Authors did tend to borrow
ideas and structures from each other in those days,' remarks Jonathan Firth,
trying not to get too deep into the literary debate. ‘All I can say is
that it certainly sounds and feels like Shakespeare to me!'
In recent
years these early plays as separate entities have been neglected -- it's
many years since Henry VI has been produced outside the trilogy, the larger
cycle, or in an uncondensed version -- but today there is much to be seen
reflecting the modern world in the study of the influence of power, the
murderous quality of families, the underestimation of goodness, justice,
salvation, the murderous relationships in families, how quickly life can
turn into nightmare, all told with a tumbling, absorbing vitality.
Henry VI was
England's youngest monarch: his father died when Henry was just nine months
old. ‘He led a sheltered, cloistered life. His mother remarried when he
was small, so he was essentially an orphan, a symbol of state from an early
age, innocent of the world. He may have been naive about life and politics,
but he wasn't stupid. He was very astute on broader issues, and I've got
to bring that out in him -- that although he's more spiritual than political
and he makes mistakes, there's someone real and sympathetic there. This
is the first king I've ever played, but that can't remove me too much from
playing a human being too!'
If the whole
of Henry VI can be compared to a film noir, a Mafia gangster legend told
across generations as son usurps father, mother manipulates uncle, then
there has been contention about Henry himself, most famously known as the
Shakespearean hero who sits down on a molehill to contemplate life. Is
he a pious wimp, a saintly idealist, or the still centre of calm who watches
a civil war rage around him?
Jonathan Firth
-- younger brother of Colin Firth -- sees him more as someone whose destiny
is outside his own control, ‘swept along by the tide of history. Events,
and destiny, are bigger than him. This is really quite a complex play,
about a man not prepared to compromise his moral integrity for gain. That's
quite something in a play about civil war. And we are seeing rather a lot
of civil war in real life, in Rwanda, in the former Yugoslavia, and that
only serves to reflect how desperate and complicated these situations are,
how every side involved seems to have legitimate grievances, how views
and actions differ so on what is right and wrong, how rapidly situations
degenerate, until power is the thing -- -- morality seems to have nothing
to do with it. And across the centuries it was just the same in the War
Of The Roses: both York and Lancaster seemed to have legitimate claims
to the throne. But there was no compromise, so there was war.
'In this families
raise armies and thrash each other. And unlike the other history plays
that base themselves solely on a central character, there are four or five
protagonists in this one equally strong; so you see so many agendas, so
much power and vitality on display.'
Director and
cast has been delving deep into the background of the period.
Back
to top |
