Player Kings proves that Shakespeare can be funny

Play-goers, beware. Director Robert Icke is back in town, and that means a turgid four-hour revival of a heavyweight classic with every actor screaming, bawling, weeping, howling and generally overdoing it. But here’s a surprise. Player Kings, Icke’s new version of Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, is a dazzling piece of entertainment and the only exaggerated performance comes from Sir Ian McKellen who plays Falstaff, quite rightly, as a noisy, swaggering dissembler.

Small details deliver large dividends. The tavern scenes are set in an east London hipster bar with chipped wooden tables and exposed brickwork. Richard Coyle’s Henry IV has been costumed to resemble the chain-smoking George VI. He first appears in tailored tweeds like a 1930s country gent. When war breaks out, he changes into full naval costume. In some of the final scenes, stricken with lung disease, he takes to his bed wearing a red dressing-gown like Noël Coward.

The cast are on top form. Toheeb Jimoh is a fine Hal, charismatic, easy on the eye, fully aware of his sexual allure but with a slyness underlying the charm. Clare Perkins moves expertly between comedy and pathos as Mistress Quickly, who acts tough in public but can’t conceal her fondness for the idle, sponging Falstaff. Perkins is one of the finest comedians you’ll see on stage. Shaven-headed Samuel Edward-Cook plays Hotspur as a twitchy, nervy psycho who probably belongs in a padded cell. And Robin Soans delivers a masterclass in vacuous rhetoric as Justice Shallow, who has nothing to say but, even so, can’t stop saying it. In this production, even the bores are magnificent.

McKellen’s Falstaff is a paunchy old rascal, a self-proclaimed hero who boasts of his exploits on the battlefield but has no qualms about robbing the dead.