Henry V

Donmar Warehouse, London                                                   Until April 9, 3 hrs

Rating:

Kit Harington (Game Of Thrones) is the big attraction in this bombshell version of Shakespeare’s patriotic war play. It’s in modern dress but it comes without any visual reference to Kyiv. It doesn’t need any. Watching it, Ukraine is never out of your mind.

Harington is steely, not overly posh, damping down the big charismatic speeches slightly, as if keen not to hog the spotlight.

His Henry is miles from Kenneth Branagh’s patriotic, Laurence Olivier-inspired king, but not dissimilar to Jude Law’s Henry a decade ago, though more ruthless. Harington’s Henry is SAS-hard and the message is rammed home: war is hell.

Former Royal Marine Tom Leigh was employed to add true grit to the battle scenes. It’s paid off, although he could have bellowed at them more in my view: too many of the king’s consort stand about with their hands in their pockets.

Other innovations include additional material (some Falstaff scenes from Henry IV) that shows us Prince Hal throwing up in a nightclub and singing Sweet Caroline with his Eastcheap cronies before morphing into a war lord.

The summary treatment of captives in Henry’s ‘kill all the prisoners’ scene (often cut) restores to the play its brutality. Andrew T. Mackay’s eerie vocal music, performed live, sends a note of piercing lamentation across the Agincourt battlefield.

The defending army speaks only French (with surtitles), which makes the point that neither side has any real understanding of the other. In fact the Chorus in this – played by Millicent Wong – breaks into Mandarin at moments of stress.

Nor is there the usual romcom feel in Henry’s clumsy wooing of the French princess Katherine (Anoushka Lucas, who is excellent) which is, here, a rather bitter business.

It’s in keeping with a staging by Max Webster that’s exciting, bleak and real. In fact its scenes of siege and slaughter are so painfully topical, they’re hard to watch.