Donmar’s Henry IV: Phyllida Lloyd has nothing but contempt for her audience

The age of ‘ladies first’ is back. Phyllida Lloyd reserves all the roles for the weaker sex, as I imagine she thinks of them, in this hybrid play assembled from Henry IV (i) and (ii). It’s a twin-layered production that poses as a piece of am-dram mounted in a women’s nick. The Donmar has been refitted, in and out, to resemble a prison. (Quite an expense. And there’s no interval either, so there are no bar profits to subsidise the fancy-dress party.) As we arrive we’re barked at by ushers attired as screws who harry and scold us into our plastic seats. Nothing surprising in this uppity aggression. Contempt for audiences is common among high-end theatre types: anyone ready to spend 30 quid on amusement deserves to be punished.

The prison setting makes sense during the tavern scenes but generates weird anomalies everywhere else. The wrong-sex casting is blind to nuances of age and region, so many crucial distinctions are smudged. Clare Dunne plays Hal, a Lancastrian, with a clotted north Dublin accent. Her stroppy, self-conscious performance is full of gestures that seem to have been selected for, not by, her. Her dad, Henry IV, is played by posh Harriet Walter whose slick dark hairstyle and drawn, smoker’s face make her look like Peter O’Toole imitating David Bowie, or the late Tom Bell having a stab at Albert Steptoe. She certainly doesn’t look female which in this context is, I believe, a high compliment. (But she won’t be pasting any production shots from this show into her personal scrapbook.) Ashley McGuire is excellent as a laid-back White Dee-ish Falstaff. And Jade Anouka is great to watch but she can’t hope to suggest the romantic agonies of Hotspur, one of Shakespeare’s tastiest roles.