Updating Jacobean classics: An interview with Henry Filloux-Bennett and Nicholas Thompson

Updating Jacobean classics: An interview with Henry Filloux-Bennett and Nicholas Thompson

04 August, 2012
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan talks to directors Nicholas Thompson and Henry Filloux-Bennett of the Old Red Lion Theatre about their contemporary takes on two Jacobean classics.

Full disclosure: I don't really like seeing Shakespeare performed. The writing I love but the performances not so much. Reading Shakespeare is a different story. Give me a text and I can't tear into the Bard's words fast enough, there is no better commander of the English language.  But the performances he inspires tend to bore me, especially his representation of men.

I fall into that poorly-regarded group of theatregoers who wait to see Shakespeare, Webster and Middleton brought into our world in a production that doesn't demand we make our peace with the  machismo of their era. So it is with slight trepidation and much curiosity that I approach the Old Red Lion to talk to directors Henry Filloux-Bennett and Nick Thompson about their repertoire season featuring Shakespeare's Henry V and Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy.

They've set the former in 2003 and onwards as Blair leads the country to war and the latter in the decadence of the late '80s – think American Psycho and the ecstasy decade. I wonder if the directors feel a pressure to update the classics but their programming reflects their audience, the space they're working with and there's no pressure to fulfil a brief that might come with subsidy since they don't receive any.  “Also,” says Henry, “why not do it? When you're dealing with the themes in Henry V and The Revenger's Tragedy,  you're dealing with wars that should or should not be waged and about vengeance being taken for things that have gone wrong in society. Those things are so current you may as well update them.”

“That's what they were doing at the time,” adds Nick referring to the playwrights, “they were commenting on the era and often responding, particularly in The Revenger's Tragedy, in quite a covert way because it was dangerous to be so open about what they were saying.” It's interesting then, that by subverting Shakespeare's text as Henry intends to do , it works just as well for anti-war production as it would for one about manifest destiny.



With no such confinements on either of the directors, they found the parallels between the classics and the more contemporary periods spoke for themselves. “The eerie thing about researching Henry V” says Henry about the show he's directing, “is that the historical Henry and Tony Blair are one in the same person. One was given their power and one was elected but that's where the differences end. Both firmly believe they have a moral and religious obligation to go to war, they both felt they had something to prove. They both wanted to leave a legacy that would survive them, they both needed to go to war they both felt obligated. The similarities are worryingly bizarre. They were both supremely arrogant, they both had advisors they ignored and they knew they were going to war despite sending out ambassadors.”

This isn't the first time Henry V has been thought of in the context of the Iraq War (in fact it speaks to most wars fought abroad), Nicholas Hytner did it in 2003 at the National but minus the years of atrocities both political and military that have occurred since. Abu Ghraib was 2004, the Baha Mousa inquiry only concluded last year and after the abduction and  subsequent rescue of Jessica Lynch in 2003, more American soldiers were captured and killed in 2007. The Chilcot Inquiry is supposed to publish something this summer about the legality of going to war and all this comes on top of the memory of the cringe-worthy Bush-Blair bravado.

Such specific connotations are useful Nick explains, “With Henry V there's a lot of overt, political reference. With Revenger's we discussed where this level of selfishness comes from? And if you're actually going to do these things, how are they going to justify it to themselves.” He's talking about the actions of Vindice, the central character in The Revenger's Tragedy and those that wield power over him. Years after his lover is killed by the Duke, Vindice enters the Italian courts disguised as a servant where he is tasked with reprehensible moral and sexual corruption. He is enveloped in a battle for power and domination and surrounded by wealth and the opportunities that come with it. “It's about a court abusing their position, looking after their own interests instead of the people's and enjoying their bunga-bunga parties and their laissez-faire politics.”

“The setting of the plays,” concludes Henry, “the late 1980s world of moral turpitude and Henry V with the Iraq war,  they both challenge moral codes. One's about revenge and one's about responsibility and those are both things that are just as current now as they've ever been.”

Henry V and The Revenger's Tragedy run in rep until 29th September.

Images by R W Davenport

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Naima Khan