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[heartofstanding]

During January this year, an Sydney-based theatre company put on something called “Rose Riot”, which condenses Shakespeare’s History plays from Richard II to Richard III into a two-part play, the first called The Hollow Crown (Richard II to Henry V) and the second The Wars of the Roses (the Henry VIs and Richard III).

I saw the first part (The Hollow Crown) on Friday evening and really enjoyed it. Though I will say that 1) I was lucky that I am a little familiar with the plays and 2) I wished I knew even more because I would’ve gotten so much more out of the way that the plays have been cut and (sometimes) remixed and sewn together.

Basically, the first act was Richard II and Henry IV Pt 1, ending just before Shrewsbury, second act combining the Shrewsbury climax of Henry IV Pt 1, Henry IV Pt 2 and Henry V. Obviously, there’s a lot of reductions going on. In Richard II, there is nothing about the Duke of Gloucester’s death, nothing about the feud and then duel between Bolingbroke and Mowbray. A lot of Henry IV Pt 2 is also cut with Prince John gone or merged into Henry IV’s other sons (genderswapped) and Northumberland quickly disappears after Shrewsbury – what remains, iirc, are pretty much the Hal-Falstaff scenes, Henry IV’s insomnia and death.

We had a genderswapped Bolingbroke/Henry IV, Hal/Henry V, Falstaff and Princess Katherine (who is called Kylian in the play), and other characters as well. Katherine’s nurse is reimagined as Kylian’s lover who is also present for the wooing scene (ouch). I thought the wooing scene played a little odd as a result of the genderswapping, but everyone else was great and, after becoming fed up with Falstaff in the BBC Hollow Crown, I freaking loved Falstaff in this.

As a result of the cuts, remixes and reimagining of the play, I do think the characters and their arcs suffered. I often didn’t really know how I was meant to feel about each character. We don’t really know why Richard II is a bad king (besides having annoying friends) – the reasons the play gives are cut, we start with the garden scene and thus Richard’s deposition is already on the cards – and then I don’t think we really get enough time to feel his fall (we go immediately from the deposition to his separation from the queen to his prison soliloquy with no real space in between to breathe and feel it). Bolingbroke reminded me a bit of a parodic female politician in Richard II, but I don’t really know how I was meant to think of her in Henry IV. I think Hal/Henry V, had the best of the bad lot because she’s there for most of the play. 

In terms of the story cuts and remixes… With the duel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke gone, what we get instead is Gaunt’s dying rebuke to Richard, who then banishes Bolingbroke as punishment for Gaunt’s words. I think (I’m like 99.9% sure, but also deeply aware of my ignorance about Henry VI so) that instead of the gage scene, we get a scene from one of the Henry VIs in which the parliament disrupts in a squabble and individuals pick a white rose for York or a red rose for Lancaster. I think it helps set up the divisions that lead into The Wars of the Roses (the second play/part of this production) and reinforces the idea that it was the historical Richard II’s deposition directly led to the historical Wars of the Roses.

Aumerle actually starts off the rose-picking scene, and his characterisation was fiercely protective of Richard, remaining defiant towards Bolingbroke’s usurpation. I freaking loved him. We do not get stabby Aumerle, yay, but Piers Exton (I can’t remember who played him, but definitely not Aumerle who also played Kylian/Katherine and Poins - there’s a cast list here, though it covers both parts of the production).

One of the things that I really liked is that Hal’s first appearance (wearing a dress that’s very little girl-ish, Peter Pan collar and all) is immediately after Richard’s body is presented to Bolingbroke/Henry IV, and it’s there she meets (for the first time) Falstaff – the implication being that Richard’s murder and Bolingbroke’s involvement in it leads into Hal’s wildness, her attachment to Falstaff and the collapse in the relationship between Hal and Bolingbroke.

Obviously, as someone who likes to be buried in feels over Richard and Hal’s relationship, this was wonderful though I thought it could have been teased out more – is Hal’s wildness because of Hal’s relationship with Richard (historically, one that Henry V remembered with affection)? Or because of her mother’s complicity in a murder? Or suddenly having her mother become the queen and the weight of the knowledge she’ll be the queen next if they don’t get usurped and kill themselves? Or all of the reasons I’ve given and more?

The Hal and Falstaff relationship was more of a reinterpretation, with the second act presenting them falling out. We have Falstaff claiming Hotspur as her kill after Hal killed him, and then shortly after the scene where Hal overhears Falstaff insulting her to Doll Tearsheet, is played with Hal becoming very, very upset over it and there’s no resolution or softening before the scene is interrupted by the news Henry IV is dying. Thus, it does imply that Hal’s rejection of Falstaff comes as a reaction to this split in their relationship, a sense that Falstaff has wronged and upset Hal – of course, we still have the earlier scenes (Hal imitating Henry IV and promising to banish her friends, the “I know you all” soliloquy) so the relationship isn’t completely rewritten.

Also, after the rejection Falstaff strips off her outer costume and fat-suit while (I think) giving dialogue about Falstaff’s death from Henry V, which gives the sense that Falstaff, like Hal, was playing a role that must now be discarded.

What I really, really loved was how, because of the compilation nature of the play, the characters were ‘haunted’ by the dead characters. Gaunt hung around the stage after his death, witnessing Richard’s land-grab (Duchy-grab? Lancaster-grab?) and Bolingbroke’s permanent exile. Hotspur also hung around for a bit, though my mind’s blanked on what his ghost did. Richard’s body “rises” and briefly joins the party-goers at the Boar’s Head, appears in Hal’s “I know you all speech” (quoting “I wasted time and now time doth waste me”), Henry V’s prayer before Agincourt (where she’s talking about reburying Richard) and, my personal favourite, Henry IV’s death scene, where Richard is the one to tell Henry IV the chamber is called Jerusalem.

The aesthetic of the play was gorgeous. The cast initially starts off wearing all rose-patterned clothes (e.g. Aumerle wears leggings, Bolingbroke a shirt, Hal a skimpy dress), or wear light or dark army fatigues for war scenes or if they’re more military-minded (e.g. Hotspur). In the Henry V portion of the play, most of the cast wear white underwear (women shifts, men underpants and singlets) while Henry V remains in black fatigues throughout, even during her courtship with Kylian. The disguises Falstaff and co wear in the robbery are masks made from photographs of Australia’s past five Prime Ministers (all but one of the five have been deposed by their parties without serving a full term; the fifth is going to lose the next election thank god). I think it breaks the reality of the play a bit, but it is funny. There photos of rehearsals and performance here (the performance is from last December, in a different performance space so the staging and some costumes are different to what I saw, and features both parts of the “Rose Riot”).

The choreography was fantastic – it was amazing to see how the limitations of the staging led to something more symbolic but absolutely stunning and understandable. They had a horse skull for Hotspur’s horse, where the cast made the body carried him on their shoulders. I thought the cast did very well and my “notes” about the characters are more about the choices made by the adaptation and the direction. I really, really loved Falstaff.

Random things I also loved: the music Richard hears in his prison soliloquy is revealed to be the music for Bolingbroke’s coronation (which is acted out around him). The Queen being the one to break the mirror in Richard’s deposition scene, as a way to sort of snap him out of his despair. Also Poins. Poins was really great, and the dynamic between Poins and Hal was amazing. 

I should absolutely mention the setting which was absolutely gorgeous. The production was set in the Leura Everglades Garden Theatre, up in Australia’s Blue Mountains. Cockatoos flew overhead and kookaburras laughed during the performance, the sun set and the stars came out. The garden theatre was gorgeous and I love how it tied into the idea of England as a garden in Richard II, and, if I turned to the right during the performance there was a beautiful view of mountains and valleys.  I loved the location so much that I went back on Sunday morning to explore the area more fully and take photos (so the sun is in the opposite position than what it was when the performance was on, the mountain photograph was taken at interval on Friday night, hence the dusk lighting and it’s zoomed in a lot because otherwise my camera wouldn’t pick up the mountains).

I do really, really, really regret and am saddened by the fact that I didn’t see the second part. It’s a limited run and the last performance is playing as I write this (if it hasn’t been affected by storms). But I think it was a wise choice. I’m utterly unfamiliar with the plays and feel like I need not to be to understand and appreciate the decisions they made. The venue is also a fair distance from me and combined with the late finish, it meant I needed to stay overnight nearby, and I just didn’t have the time yesterday to see it. I would also have been really tempted to see it again – there was nothing on TV tonight and I didn’t feel like watching any of the DVDs I have on the go, so I put on the BBC Hollow Crown and it just didn’t hit the sweet spot for me and I couldn’t stand Hiddleston’s Hal, boo.

As well as the rose-picking scene mentioned above, we also had Henry VI appear when the chorus was talking about Henry V’s death and Henry VI’s failures. Which makes me want to see Pt 2 even more to see if the characters from the Henriad make an appearance… and also makes me want a miniseries that has the option to weave the stories of the plays together and have the “ghosts” appearing – sort of like the BBC Hollow Crown if they’d not made that decision belatedly and were less of a “straight” adaptation with the horrible flashbacks in Henry V to Bardolf and Falstaff.

It does make me desperate to get the RSC and Globe Henriad boxsets though, to expand my knowledge about the plays, and also to watch the BBC Hollow Crown: Wars of the Roses so I can at least see those plays.

I want to keep talking about it because I really enjoyed it and have feels omg.