Henry V, and: Timon of Athens (review)

In the summer of 1599, the inaugural Chorus of Shakespeare’s Henry V wondered whether the famous victories to follow could be crammed within the “wooden O” of the early modern amphitheatre. In the summer of 2012, Os of a less architectural nature surrounded British Shakespearean production as companies foreign and domestic united in a Cultural Olympiad to coincide with the London Games. The Olympic Rings thus circumscribed a celebratory summer in which Team GB overachieved and the British public basked vicariously in the glow of gold, silver, bronze and a royal Diamond Jubilee. For all the jubilation, however, the excesses of privilege on display in an age of austerity troubled some of the millions who watched a million-pound Jubilee barge floating down the Thames and exclusive busses ferrying VIP corporate sponsors along priority “Games Lanes” to an Olympic site located in one of London’s most impoverished boroughs. Framed by the twin Os of the Olympic Games and the Occupy Movement, the summer of 2012 was one in which the 99 percent flocked to London to observe two different 1 percents: humanity at its physical best and materialistic worst.

Officially, the Occupy London movement ended with the dispersal of the Finsbury Park camp on 14 June 2012. A few protesters decamped to Shoreditch, the early modern theatreland that may have witnessed the premiere of Henry V at the Curtain. Alternately, the play might have opened the original Globe on Bankside and centuries later, a day before Occupy London met its demise, Henry V was revived at the reborn Globe. The text seemed an inspired choice for a summer that saw English victory in the Tour de France and asked disparate Britons to unite in a volunteer army to mount a successful Games. In a reflection of this modern Britain, director Dominic Dromgoole featured a multiethnic and multigendered cast well-prepared to execute the broadly comic and clearly spoken acting style for which the Globe is famous. Accordingly, the first scene eschewed a Privy Council chamber for a literal privy and the clergy multitasked their way through the play’s exposition. Though the choice enabled the Globe’s near-requisite flash of fleshy behind and implicitly commented on the churchmens’ self-serving arguments, Dromgoole’s scatological staging proved...