Henry V Take 2: Cross-Stitch Theatre’s parodic, poignant love letter to Lockdown Shakespeare
As a scholar and fan of all things moving image as well as Shakespearean, the tropes and narratives that recur throughout the history of cinema are fascinating to me. One which goes all the way back to Hollywood’s Golden Age (if not earlier) is what’s often known as the ‘Let’s put on a show’ formula. You know the story: a group of plucky performers are planning a production only to face some form of adversity. This is either something that prevents them from putting on said show, giving their production a new sense of urgency and emotional investment; or that threatens something they all care about, leading them to put on their performance to save the day.
Busby Berkeley’s Babes in Arms (1939) is often cited as the progenitor of ‘Let’s put on a show’, and is certainly an early influential example whether it was actually the first or not. White Christmas (1954) gave it a festive spin in 1954; School of Rock (2003) subverted the formula, albeit heartwarmingly so; and the Muppets have done it at least twice, most recently in The Muppets (2011). Shakespearean cinema isn’t immune either: Hamlet 2 (2008) closely follows ‘Let’s put on a show’, the ‘show’ itself being a ludicrous musical sequel to Hamlet; and even Shakespeare in Love (1998) either leans on the formula, or nods clearly in its direction at a few points.
For theatres, practitioners and audience members, 2020 has seen the ‘Let’s put on a show’ narrative play out in reality on a global scale. Productions worldwide were pulled mid-run in March, and many more never had their opening night. Suddenly, theatremakers were unsure not only of when they would step on stage again, but also what condition the industry would be in when they finally could. The majority of the online productions Gemma and I have covered over the past eight months have been born at least in part out of the desire of actors and directors to ‘do something’ for the career and industry they love. The worldwide closure of theatres is the real world adversity theatremakers have had to overcome this year, and heading online to ‘put on a show’ is the industry’s way of saving the day. This sense of banding together for common beliefs, passions — and survival — comes through in many of the online productions created this year.
Cross-Stitch Theatre’s Henry V Take 2 offers a double whammy of this shared spirit, being as it is a lockdown Shakespeare production about creating lockdown Shakespeare. Writer and director Beth Atkinson’s play depicts the fictional Miscaster Theatre Group’s efforts to move their planned stage production of Henry V online in late March 2020 with a depleted cast and in only a matter of days. Atkinson has said the play is ‘[i]nspired by the work of Mischief Theatre and our own experiences of what can go wrong on Zoom’.¹ Mischief are perhaps best known for their West End show The Play That Goes Wrong, a parody of 1920s murder mystery plays which takes the audience both behind the scenes and derives its humour from the play-within-the-play being intentionally terrible. Henry V Take 2 offers a similar send-up on live online productions, with the focus not on the finished product but the process behind it — it’s not hard to imagine Rob Myles or Sid Phoenix getting a sense of déjà vu were they to watch Atkinson’s Zoom play.
This approach gives Cross-Stitch free rein to lampoon Shakespeare’s history play through modern tropes and references, as well as interrogating the potentially problematic elements of performing early modern drama in the twenty-first century. It’s easy to see Alexandra (Monica Nash), the in-play director of Henry V, as a caricature of perceived ‘overly woke’ theatremakers. She worries, for example, that Pistol’s line ‘The fig of Spain’ (H5, 3.6.58) might cause offense as a ‘xenophobic slur’, commenting that ‘it does feel as if Shakespeare’s trying to insult as many people as possible at this point’. The response of cast member Sophie (Beth Jay) that ‘Shakespeare’s audience wouldn’t have thought it was xenophobic and so we shouldn’t either’ captures the other side of the coin: taking Shakespeare’s words as sacrosanct and assuming they shouldn’t be tampered with even if they’re potentially problematic simply through vague defenses of ‘history’ or ‘culture’. Atkinson’s script subtly skewers both sides of the debate, showing the problems both of hair-trigger censorship and placing Shakespeare’s works on a pedestal as untouchable masterworks.
I’ve written in the past about the metamodern quality of lockdown Shakespeare, and Henry V Take 2 provides a further example of this aesthetic. Luke Turner notes that ‘[w]hereas postmodernism was characterised by deconstruction, irony, pastiche, relativism [and] nihilism [. . .] metamodernism engages with the resurgence of sincerity, hope, romanticism [and] affect’ in the twenty-first century. Turner continues:
[. . .] [R]ather than simply signalling a return to naïve modernist ideological positions, metamodernism considers that our era is characterised by an oscillation between aspects of both modernism and postmodernism [. . .] The metamodern generation understands that we can be both ironic and sincere in the same moment; that one does not necessarily diminish the other.²
The ‘Let’s put on a show’ narratives from Hollywood’s Golden Age have an authentic earnestness to them, due to their emergence from — and taking place within — a world not yet subjected to late-twentieth-century cynicism and superficiality. Whilst they face obstacles and self-doubt, the characters genuinely believe in the power of their hope, enthusiasm and hard work to pay off and save the day — and, when the formula is followed, they do. Twenty-first century examples such as School of Rock and The Muppets recapture this modernist sense of sincere idealism, whilst also displaying distinctly postmodern pop culture (self-)referentiality, a duality which gives them an identifiably metamodern quality. Henry V Take 2 shares this oscillation between modern and postmodern values, channelling the ‘Let’s put on a show’ formula to create a sense of sincerity and affective depth balanced with postmodern self-referentiality. Whilst Shakespeare is fair game for subversion and parody throughout Henry V Take 2, any humour derived from the process of online performance comes from a place of genuine love and respect rather than cynical mockery or subversion.
The efforts of Miscaster actor Declan (Sandy Murray) in crafting an effective Zoom performance as King Henry capture this metamodern sensibility. Early in the rehearsal process, Declan is seen practising Henry’s iconic ‘Once more unto the breach’ speech from act 3 scene 1, clearly uncertain about his performance. He’s interrupted by fellow cast member Nick (James Peters), whose suggestions offer empty platitudes — ‘you are you, and that’s all you can be’, ‘go big or go home’ — and exaggerated acting techniques. Nick also reduces the speech to a series of pop culture sound bites: ‘Imitate the action of the tiger’ (3.1.6) becomes a reference to Netflix series Tiger King, and ‘The game’s afoot’ (3.1.32) is framed as the catchphrase of Sherlock Holmes. Nick himself becomes a self-referential Shakespearean in-joke in this scene too, his screen name ‘Nick B’ alluding to A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s similar know-it-all amateur thespian Nick Bottom.
The pop culture referentiality of Nick linking ‘The game’s afoot’ to Sherlock Holmes is increased further as the scene continues. It’s amplified first by Nick recommending Declan puts on a deerstalker as an ‘Easter egg’ for the audience when saying the line, reducing Holmes himself to his pop culture image; and again when Declan, who doesn’t have a deerstalker but is advised any hat will do, opts for a Santa hat. The non sequitur not only reduces his delivery of the speech purely to its comedic potential rather than any meaning within the words, but also ups the pop culture iconography — replacing one iconic piece of headwear (Holmes’s) with another (Santa’s) that today exists almost entirely as a symbol of commerciality.
Despite Nick’s advice pushing Miscaster’s Henry V towards postmodern superficiality, Declan’s desire to deliver an authentic performance as Henry is clear in this early scene, and comes out further in a later scene in which he speaks to Sophie for further help. In contrast to Nick, Sophie references Stanislavskian techniques and advises Declan to ‘[find] the truth in a scene’ and to ‘play the truth of encouraging us, inspiring us’. Sophie’s advice is framed through the idea of Declan method acting as Henry, but also echoes the positivity and hope of the ‘Let’s put on a show’ formula underpinning Atkinson’s narrative.
This truth and authenticity is seen increasingly through Declan’s performances from this point, culminating in a second rendition of ‘Once more unto the breach’ near the end of Henry V Take 2. In contrast to the pop-culture-fuelled superficiality of Declan’s earlier performance, he embodies the positivity and hopefulness of Henry at this point in Henry V. We are still watching an actor (Murray) playing an actor (Declan), rehearsing a play within a play, drawing attention to the inherent artificiality of theatre in a postmodern way. But this second version also embodies authenticity and sincerity in the same moment: we believe both in Declan as Henry rallying his troops mid-battle, and in Murray as Declan determined to put on a performance against the odds for the audience, for his fellow cast members, for himself, and — perhaps most poignantly — for the theatre industry he loves. To use the words of Turner again, Henry V Take 2 is ‘both ironic and sincere in the same moment’, brilliantly capturing the together apart sensibility of lockdown theatre.
Cross-Stitch Theatre’s online performance of Henry V Take 2 is available to watch free on YouTube.
¹ https://twitter.com/bethiatko/status/1324758331400114176
² Luke Turner (2015) Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction. http://www.metamodernism.com/2015/01/12/metamodernism-a-brief-introduction/
Production Details
Henry V Take 2
Presented by Cross-Stitch Theatre via Zoom, 13 November, 2020. Written and directed by Beth Atkinson. With Natalia Bogdanova (Maria Tennyson/Dauphin of France/Pistol/Montjoy), Edward Cartwright (Stephen Lineweaver/Archbishop of Canterbury/Macmorris/King of France), Stuart Duncan (Steven Wallis/Constable of France/Scroop/Williams), Beth Jay (Sophie Wallis/Duke of Exeter/Gower/Alice), Sandy Murray (Declan Edwards/King Henry V), Monica Nash (Alexandra Rawlins/Chorus/Fluellen), James Peters (Nick Bainbridge/Duke of Bedford/French Soldier), Amelia Stephenson (Tilly Armstrong/Duke of Orleans/Princess Katharine/Bates), and Will Thompson-Brant (Collin Pembroke/Rambures/Bishop of Ely/Cambridge).
