Henry VIII

Abstract

Reviewed by: Henry VIII Robert Hubbard Henry VIII Presented by Shakespeare’s Globe, London. 19 May–21 October 2022. Additions by Hannah Khalil. Directed by Amy Hodge. Designed by Georgia Lowe. Music composed by Bytom Deering and Maimuna Memon. Music orchestrated and arranged by Bytom Deering. Songwriting and lyrics by Maimuna Memon. Music performed by Joley Cragg, Nina Harries, Garance Louis, and Shirley Tetteh. With Jamie Ballard (Cardinal Wolsey), Esmonde Cole (Surrey/Cromwell), Natasha Cottriall (Princess Mary), Janet Etuk (Anne Bullen), Adam Gillen (King Henry VIII), Debbie Korley (Woman 1/Patience/Elizabeth), Kevin McMonagle (Chamberlain), Baker Mukasa (Norfolk/Sands), Jonah Russell (Buckingham/Cardinal Campeius), Anne Savva (Woman 2/Hope), Bea Segura (Queen Katharine), and Genevieve Dawson (Narrator/Singer). My students sometimes use the phrase “burn it down” to express their lack of patience with the incremental pace of positive social change. Whether talking about the patriarchy or the collateral damage wrought by capitalism, “burn it down” wafts into their conversation as a swift if not fully vetted solution. This phrase was on my mind when I went to see the summer 2022 production of the play that literally burned the original Globe down in 1613 when a rogue spark from the firing of a ceremonial canon famously ignited the thatched roof of the theater. In this summer’s production of Shakespeare’s and Fletcher’s Henry VIII, the flames were figurative but nevertheless powerful. Director Amy Hodge and playwright Hannah Khalil’s feminist retelling burned down all reverence for Henry VIII’s complicated and deadly patriarchy. Under the PR line, “The present is his / The future is hers,” Henry VIII played from 19 May to 21 October at London’s reconstructed Globe [End Page 556] Theatre. Hodge’s carnivalesque direction and Khalil’s substantial additions to Shakespeare and Fletcher’s script made this recent version almost unrecognizable and substantially better. Instead of a congratulatory masque celebrating one of history’s most notorious misogynists, Hodge and Khalil’s reframed Henry VIII privileged the perspectives of the resilient women present in the margins of the original text. Fans of Shakespeare and Fletcher’s tag-teamed script, assuming some still exist, may have recognized the scorched timbers of the original plot. Buckingham (Jonah Russell) still dared to express his open disdain for the political corruption of the powerful Cardinal Wolsey (Jamie Ballard). In Hodge’s unsubtle staging, Buckingham observed Wolsey filling his suitcase with the gold bricks stacked against the pillars of Georgia Lowe’s garish scene design. Before Buckingham could become a whistleblower, the Cardinal made a preemptive strike. Loyal to Wolsey, Henry VIII (Adam Gillen) remained true to the original text and allowed trumped-up charges of treason to proceed against noble Buckingham; an execution soon followed. Wolsey then supported his King’s plan to divorce his first wife, Katherine (Bea Segura), but tried to play both sides by secretly siding with the Pope regarding Henry’s impetuous desire to wed Anne Bullen (Janet Etuk). This insubordination predictably resulted in Wolsey’s fall from power and the political ascension of Thomas Cromwell (Esmonde Cole). In deference to royal patronage, Shakespeare and Fletcher conclude with a salutation of monarchical legacy. In the original script’s final moments, Henry presents a swaddled baby Elizabeth for a blessing before the Archbishop. Conveniently, Shakespeare and Fletcher’s version concludes here, before Henry’s four additional Queens can make their fateful entrances. While sharing this basic structure with the original version, Khalil’s radically modified text sported deep cuts and substantial new additions. In support of a feminist remaking, Khalil gave the neglected women characters more to say by pirating dozens of lines from other Shakespeare plays and sonnets. For example, Queen Anne took her mandate to procreate seriously by comically screaming, “the world must be peopled!” during childbirth, borrowing from Much Ado About Nothing. Absent from the original text, Katherine and Henry’s daughter Mary (Natasha Cottriall) here became a character and assumed a prominent role, carefully listening to and commenting upon the twists and turns of history that write her fate. Knowing that this young woman ruled England for a short time added a playful sense of destiny to her pirated line from Henry...