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Article: THEATRE
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- May 12, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Presumably the last thing in anybody's mind when the RSC was
working out its Stratford summer season was that Henry V would open
the week after the Channel Tunnel, since for all the avowals of
entente cordiale with which the play ends, it's not the one you'd
pick to commemorate the forging of new ties with Europe. In Matthew
Warchus's striking production, the brutality and ruthlessness of
Henry's methods against the French aren't stinted, and seeing their
over- civilised nobility - gorgeously dandified in Kandis Cook's
costumes - against Henry's functional, grim army you have some idea
of the shock that, say, Parma must have felt on meeting Arsenal.
This interpretation is hardly calculated ...