‘Capital crimes, chew’d, swallow’d and digested’: ITALive’s Kings of War and the final days of Trump
On Sunday 10th January 2021, Internationaal Theater Amsterdam streamed a live performance of Ivo van Hove’s epic Kings of War — a transformation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry VI Part 2 (bookended by scenes from Part 1 and Part 3) and Richard III into a single four-and-a-half-hour play. The live stream, broadcast as part of the theatre’s ITALive project, came just four days after the storming of the US Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, who falsely believed the election had been ‘stolen’ from the incumbent. A performance of any version of these plays — which have so often been adapted to reflect moments of political turmoil — might arguably have felt unusual had reference not been made to recent real world events. Kings of War’s incorporation of screen technology, most prominently through the colossal screen which loomed above the expansive war-room-like performance space throughout the production, arguably created the first and most inescapable sense of mirroring the world at the start of 2021 so soon after images of the defining moment of the end of Trump’s presidency had been broadcast across the world on screens of all sizes.
The connection to political events was made overtly before the show had even begun, however, through an introduction from van Hove himself. The director directly referenced the storming of the Capitol, as well as Rebecca Mead’s previous description of his adaptation as ‘the first great theatrical work of the Trump era’ in her 2016 review for The New Yorker.¹ Van Hove suggested that, in Shakespeare’s works, ‘the kings all too often remind us of our own world leaders today’, and that ‘Shakespeare always turns out to be a contemporary for the great themes, the great crises’. His sentiments echoed not only Jan Kott’s presentist view of Shakespeare, articulated in his 1964 book Shakespeare Our Contemporary; but also the way in which practitioners, political commentators and the viewing public have repeatedly returned to Shakespeare throughout the global pandemic, perhaps in the hope of making sense of the ‘great crises’ they see unfolding around them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the clearest link to Trump in the play itself came through Shakespeare’s most notoriously villainous and ruthless English monarch, Richard III. After sending Buckingham (Aus Greidanus) to report the illegitimacy of King Edward’s (Bart Sleegers) children towards the end of 3.5, Richard (Hans Kesting) was left alone on stage. Seated at a mid-twentieth-century war desk with three rotary telephones in front of him, Kesting proceeded to hold mock phonecalls with present-day world leaders, playing at premiership like a child playing with a Fisher-Price toy. After abusive ‘conversations’ with Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel on the first two phones, Richard lifted the third receiver and adopted an American drawl — ‘Hello… How are ya, Donald?’ — then ridiculed the outgoing POTUS by paraphrasing his own notorious line from 5.4: ‘A tweet, a tweet, my kingdom for a tweet!’.
An overt reference to Trump’s permanent ban from his social media platform of choice only two days earlier, Kesting’s addition placed this performance of Kings of War starkly in conversation with the cultural moment surrounding it, directly connecting Trump with Richard. In this moment, Trump’s Twitter ban became his defeat at Bosworth, the inglorious end of a tyrant, casting then-Presiden-elect Joe Biden as the Richmond-like saviour of an America that ‘hath long been mad, and scarr’d herself’ (Richard III, 5.7.23). Through his mockery of Trump, Kesting’s Richard also unwittingly foreshadowed his own end some two acts early and before he had even assumed the throne. Trump and Richard became figures staring at each other in a hall of mirrors: Richard’s infamous downfall highlighting the inevitability of Trump’s ignominious exit of the Oval Office.
Where Kesting’s Trumpian additions to 3.5 of Richard III offered an overt reference to recent events, Kings of War’s most resonant echoes of the start of 2021 came much earlier and more subtly in its opening hour, which offered a streamlined adaptation of Henry V. Having stripped away any scene not focused on the king, and thereby removing many of the play’s more comedic moments, van Hove also rejected the traditional — and arguably now clichéd — characterisation of Henry (Ramsey Nesr) as a heroic warrior. The opening moments of Kings of War adapted 4.5 of Henry IV Part 2, with Hal callously taking the crown from the dying Henry IV (Hugo Koolschijn) lying unceremoniously on a hospital trolley, marking out van Hove’s version of the prince as significantly more power-hungry than the character is regularly shown to be. Hal was crowned moments after his father died — there was no Falstaff to reject, no regal maturity to assume. Van Hove instead allowed the juvenile prince to ascend to a throne he appeared to covet for its absolute authority, without understanding the responsibility also required to effectively govern.
Perhaps the most chilling parallel of the present came through van Hove’s transformation of Henry’s speech to the troops at Harfleur which opens 3.1. Instead of an impassioned rallying cry to his men alongside them on the battlefield, the king delivered the speech as a political broadcast. Van Hove showed us Henry speaking into the camera, with the ‘broadcast’ itself appearing on the big screen at the back of the stage. The first half of the speech was cold and rehearsed, as Henry read from a pre-prepared script held in front of him. Once he folded the page shut, however, the speech became more impassioned: as the camera zoomed in on his face, Henry fired up his army not with honour, but with anger.
In this moment, it was hard not to see parallels with the televised speeches of both Trump and Biden regarding the Capitol riots on 6th January. Whilst it was Biden who used the language of warfare in his live broadcast, describing the events as ‘an assault’ and a ‘siege’,² Henry’s cold and calculating delivery felt more akin to Trump’s sickeningly indulgent pre-recorded message telling the rioters they were ‘very special’ and unconvincingly urging them to ‘go home, and go home in peace’.³ Henry’s increasing lack of control and composure during the second half of his speech felt like the message he truly wanted to deliver to his followers, stirring up rage and machismo — something Trump had done numerous times prior to his unconvincing condemnation of the violence, most recently at the National Mall only hours before.⁴
Of all the kings in van Hove’s Shakespearean epic, Henry felt the most at home in front of the camera and on the big screen — a reminder that contemporary world leaders inherently must be television personalities as well as politicians. But also, in the final days of Trump’s time in office, that being able to dominate a screen will never be enough to offer true leadership if it’s not backed up with statesmanlike behaviour, experience and values.
Following the live stream of Kings of War, ITALive will stream a live performance of Ivo van Hove’s Roman Tragedies — a six-hour epic which adapts Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra — at 2.00pm GMT on Sunday 14th February 2021. Access to the live stream can be purchased at the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam website here.
Kings of War
Presented by Internationaal Theater Amsterdam via ITALive, 10 January, 2021. Directed by Ivo van Hove. With Ramsey Nasr, Eelco Smits, Hans Kesting, Chris Nietvelt, Janni Goslinga, Bart Slegers, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Aus Greidanus, Alwin Pulinckx, Harm Duco Schut, Celia Nufaar, Ilke Paddenburg, Hugo Koolschijn, and Jip van den Dool.
