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Canberra Today 14°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

An ‘outside eye’ on the king

HE’S John Bell’s “outside eye.”

He’s the artistic director of his own Sport for Jove Theatre and the founding director of the Sydney Hills Shakespeare in the Park, the Leura Shakespeare Festival and Shakespeare in the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Damien Ryan, right, with members of the "Henry 4" cast. Photo by LIsa Tomasetti.
Damien Ryan, right, with members of the “Henry 4” cast. Photo by Lisa Tomasetti.
Yes, Damien Ryan is exactly the right person to co-direct “Henry 4”, premiering in Canberra, with Bell, who dons a fat suit to play that old reprobate, Sir John Falstaff, the antithesis of his famous portrayal of Henry V à la Laurence Olivier in a tent at Rushcutters Bay back in the ‘60s.

Bell knows that Falstaff is perhaps the greatest Shakespearean role of all, so he needs that outside eye “to push him and give him a different perspective”.

Ryan makes no secret of his admiration of Bell.

“He’s incredibly open as a director,” he says. “So it’s more a matter of solving problems than coming up with a new vision.” Typical problems might be anachronisms such as whether to have royal characters wearing crowns in modern dress.

Ryan has worked with Bell Shakespeare as an actor, then – since 2008 – as director of their educational program and applauds the influence of the company on schoolkids’ love of the Bard’s works.

In the old days, they preferred what he calls “Boys’ Own” plays, such as “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”, but now they’re up for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Romeo and Juliet”, too.

“Bell Shakespeare has, over 20 or so years, made a great difference,” he enthuses, “now there are so many schoolkids who are getting experience of professional theatre – they’re more theatre-literate.”

So as the outside eye, what is Bell’s vision?

“The Henry plays,” Ryan suggests, “are quintessential Shakespeare… they show his thirst for the common man as he gives a full portrait of the nation – like a Breughel painting.”

In that portrait are kings, princes, drug users, prostitutes, “all given equal time and all given equal humanity”.

It’s Bell’s own adaptation of “I & II Henry IV”, and he’s done it before. While Bell introduced a touch of football hooliganism in his previous production, this version is more political. All the same, Ryan says, whether it’s footie hooligans or the London Riots, the play’s coming from the same place, a world of insurrection, alcoholic excess, drug abuse and political conniving.

The play ends with the coronation of young Prince Hal as the heroic king Henry V, and while Ryan reports that the first half is full of “lively bravado”, the second half turns darker and more nuanced, dealing with death and ageing.

It’s “a very raw, family-based story,” he says.

Prince Hal has two fathers – his birth father Henry IV, who stole the crown from Richard II, and his spiritual father, that old rogue Falstaff, who stole from everyone and whom Hal eventually rejects.

“It’s a roller-coaster,” Ryan says.

“Henry 4”, The Playhouse, February 23-March 9, bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

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Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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