Jude Law’s Henry V is a buccaneer leading a stag-night raid across the continent — but he’d be a great Macbeth

Henry V is the final show in Michael Grandage’s first West End season. The theatre was full to bursting on press night. Jude Law, in the title role, had attracted a crowd of autograph hunters, who shivered outside the stage door. One was a tall, chubby young man in loose grey clothes wearing a bobble hat and a very kindly grin. His flies were undone. The play itself is a disjointed, rambling affair. Poorly shaped, and even a little artless, it’s crowded with fights, bloodshed and laddish humour. The scenes of brutality are offset by soaring passages of patriotic verse that have been quoted into overfamiliarity. There was much coughing and guttural distraction throughout the performance. Grandage aims for handsome, elegant informality and here he scores full marks. Christopher Oram’s set is a broken squash court made from two fat walls, roughly whitewashed, which meet at the back. They open up to let in the battles. Simple and effective. The costumes underline class divisions. Infantrymen are done up like homeless crusties in Glastonbury daywear and Hobbit whiskers. The noblemen wear crisp, properly laundered gear: velvet trousers, padded tunics, discreet Celtic silver accessories. The whole lot might have been bought from a Carnaby Street outfitters in 1975 but the visual style suits the play’s medieval temper.

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Jude Law as Henry V Photo: Johan Persson

Law plays the king as a thuggish pragmatist. When he urges his soldiers to spare the defeated French peasants, he speaks as a prudent coloniser rather than as a forgiving saint. Law hasn’t Olivier’s rarefied, sacerdotal air, nor Branagh’s elusive bullishness. It’s a very blunt reading, everything is as it seems. He does the Crispin Day speech with Cockney accentations as if reaching down to the soldiery.