Owen Horsley explains why Shakespeare’s three-part history play, Henry VI, is still relevant in 2022...

Director Owen Horsley tells Steve Adams why Shakespeare’s three-part history play, Henry VI, written over 400 years ago, is still relevant in 2022, and how a dynamic young cast, drawn from all walks of life, is bringing his ambitious new RSC production to life...

The Royal Shakespeare Company’s long-delayed production of Henry VI finally reaches the stage in Stratford-upon-Avon this month, and could hardly have arrived at a more poignant time. The play’s second and third parts - named Rebellion and Wars Of The Roses in their latest incarnations - cover a turbulent time in England’s history, as civil war escalates into brutal conflict on the battlefield.

It’s hard not to draw comparisons with the very real war currently raging in Eastern Europe - not least because Rebellion questions whether people can ever truly decide their own fate, and Wars Of The Roses features Young Clifford’s prophetic line “in cruelty will I seek out my fame” - but the plays also reflect an overall theme of division in society, according to director Owen Horsley, who I spoke to just days before the Ukrainian conflict began.

“Everything is cyclical, and they’re called history cycles for a reason,” says Owen. “We’re not devoid of the same power struggles and shifts in the world that we live in, and we’re going through a period of history which actually seems to be about acute division within communities, whether it be political or generational.

“There’s a keen sense of division, and Henry VI is about that and has some really great observations about what our world is like when it’s stuck in civil war, with families and loyalties divided. So again Shakespeare’s plays find, without even trying, a relevancy that you can’t really get in the way of, as a director or as an actor. You don’t even need to try to make them relevant - you’d do them a disservice to try and force some relevancy on them because it feels like they’re a magnet to the world we live in anyway.”
The plays draw particular parallels with the angst and division felt by society during, and in the wake of, Brexit and the Covid pandemic, believes Owen.

“Rebellion talks very intelligently about division, and that is a huge part of what we’re living through at the moment, with opinions divided a lot of the time.

“It’s also about power, and that’s a theme which never ever goes out of fashion because we’re constantly being shown in the news, and in every walk of life, how power is being used and abused, and how people in power are still the focus of our attention.”

The two new productions will run in tandem at the RSC, and follow the innovative behind-the-scenes open rehearsal project and run-through performance of Henry VI: Part One that was screened online while the theatre was closed during the pandemic. 

Putting on the remaining parts simultaneously is a major undertaking with a gruelling rehearsal schedule, but Owen acknowledges how working on both plays at the same time is enabling the actors to grasp their character’s full story arc in a fairly complex narrative.

“In one rehearsal we were talking about a scene that’s in the middle of Wars Of The Roses having a knock-on effect for a character that has gone through both plays. Realising that ‘my journey starts here and ends here’ is great for the actors and gives them a sense of how it all sticks together. It’s a bit of a tapestry of a play, so it’s great to start stitching it together.”

Parts Two and Three have quite different dynamics, with a marked contrast between words (Rebellion) and actions (Wars Of The Roses) that make them perfect complements.

“They’re not plays that are performed a lot, and I don’t know why because they’re really good!
“The first is more about politics and people conspiring really - it’s like a game of chess. In the second play they throw the chess pieces away and get the swords out.”

That sword-swinging creates some of the bloodiest battle scenes of any Shakespeare play, and Owen admits the actors needed “a bit of a dance” to shake off the torment after one particularly harrowing rehearsal session.

The other big deal, with the accent very much on ‘big’, of the new productions is their sheer scale. Rebellion has more characters (85) than any other Shakespeare play (“that might explain why the plays are rarely done,” laughs Owen), and the number of actors required to portray the people of England interacting with the royal family also prompted a bold post-pandemic approach to performing it.

“This gave us an idea - for many years the RSC has built incredible relationships across the UK with partner theatres through Shakespeare Nation and our youth programme, Next Generation Act. After 18 months of developing these links online, this production seemed the perfect opportunity to be ambitious. So for ‘the people of England’ we’ve cast the people of England!”

Those people come from all over the country, with the professional cast joined by 74 adults from Blackpool, Bradford, Canterbury, Cornwall, Norwich and Nottingham, all part of Shakespeare Nation, a community programme designed to engage with people who have little or no experience of Shakespeare.

The productions also feature nine actors who have graduated from drama school during the past two years, and 21 youngsters, all aged between 13 and 17, from the RSC’s young acting company, Next Generation Act.

Rehearsals have been taking place all over the country, and Owen can’t wait to get the actors on to the RSC’s main stage in Stratford - particularly during the finale of Rebellion, which will feature the vast majority of performers.

“Six different groups are involved in one particular scene, and they’ll circulate during our run. The Next Generation actors are in another scene, and then we put them all together for our big finale, when nearly 50 people will swarm the stage as part of the rebellion. 

“It’ll feel like quite a populated stage, which is a bold statement coming out of the period we’ve all been going through. It’ll be very epic.”

Owen also believes having a young cast has helped bring even greater vitality to the epic saga being performed: “It’s been great working with them and seeing their energy and how they approach the plays.

Shakespeare was only 27 when he wrote them and a bit of an angry young man himself, so there’s something quite immediate about these plays that young actors just get. You usually think of history plays as being quite stuffy and containing so much information, but these plays cut through to the action, which everyone in the company connects to, but especially the young actors.”

Henry VI: Rebellion and Wars Of The Roses run in repertory at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from Friday 1 April to Saturday 4 June.