Ian McKellen - 'one of the world's greatest actors' (Times) - plays Falstaff in a new version of Shakespeare’s Henry IV, adapted by the award-winning writer and director Robert Icke.
A divided country, leadership crumbling, corruption in the air. Welcome to England.
Hal wasn't born to be king. Only now, it seems, he will be. His father longs for him to leave behind his friends in the taverns of Eastcheap, most notably the infamous John Falstaff. War is on the horizon. But will Hal ever come good?
Bringing together Shakespeare's two great history plays (Henry IV, parts 1 and 2), Player Kings will reign over London’s West End for twelve weeks only – playing at the Noël Coward Theatre from April 2024.
__Assisted Performances__
Captioned Performance: Saturday 1 June 2024 - 2.30pm
Audio described Performance: Saturday 15 June 2024 - 2.30pm
Falstaff’s crew of revellers and rustic yokels seem like a cross between Rooster’s “friends, outcasts and leeches” from Jerusalem and a modern, Fagin-like gang of burglars and pickpockets, with Falstaff as their head, and Mistress Quickly a particular highlight in Clare Perkins. We meet Hal (Toheeb Jimoh) staggering among them in underpants precariously slipping off (have we have seen a mooning prince before?).
For all these plays’ wider concerns about a divided kingdom beleaguered by factions and rebellion, Icke sensibly focuses on the all-important central issue: which of the two available father figures will wayward Prince Hal (Toheeb Jimoh) choose to emulate? Will it be distant, pensive King Henry (Richard Coyle), visibly buckling under the weight of majesty? Or will it be the roistering Falstaff, lording it over a den of low-lives in the scrappy taverns of Eastcheap?
2024 | West End |
West End |
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