Theatre Review: DruidShakespeare - Mick Lally Theatre, Galway
Druid’s latest extravaganza is a bold one. Truncating the four plays of the ‘Henriad’ into a more digestible narrative, the show wreaks a little havoc on Shakespeare’s work but it is always, fundamentally, a creative havoc. Shakespeare’s key themes — the weight of sovereign power, the conflict between order and anarchy, the spectre of our mortality — are rendered vividly.
Together, the four plays recount how the English crown passes from the erratic King Richard II (Marty Rea) through the usurper Henry Bolingbroke (Derbhle Crotty) to the latter’s son, Henry V (Aisling O’Sullivan). Unsurprisingly, it is the two superior plays (Richard II and King Henry IV, Part I) that come across best. The final play, Henry V, is a tad wayward, although writer Mark O’Rowe and director Garry Hynes wonderfully subvert its triumphalist tone at the close.
