A Strange Entente Cordial

As the sun continued to beat down, the annual Shakespeare invasion arrived.  Each summer a touring company spend a couple of weeks in the Lot and Dordogne performing a Shakespeare play.  This year it's 'Henry V', being the 600th anniversary of Agincourt and also, slightly more tenuously, the centenary of the First World war.

The play was set in a French Military hospital in 1915 where the English and French patients were putting on a performance of Henry V.

We went with our English summer neighbours John and Lesley.  As you can imagine this is a curiously English event with virtually all of the audience being English and so the walled garden where it was staged had a 'Glynbourne' feel to it with groups of picnicking friends enjoying the evening warmth. However I suspect that Glynebourne does not have a tom cat that owns the garden and considers that all these  people have arrived exclusively to pet him.

The play is performed in the round and so everyone is very close to the action.

To our delight, the play, performed in WWI battledress, was totally engrossing ... extremely good acting, brilliant direction, a magical moment.  The actor who played Henry is a star in the making, whilst the directors cleverly and imaginatively brought moments of Blackadder to this interpretation which suddenly took you from 1415 into the horrors of 1915.

At the end of the performance we were all stunned by the evening, one of those rare occasions when Art can take you out of yourself.

Sue says:-

What's all the fuss about Cumberbatch's Hamlet when we have this totally magical performance in a village in the depths of rural France. Watch out for Freddie Stewart girls, Henry V, he is not only gorgeous but extremely talented. Having only graduated from RADA two years ago he has already featured on  TV and in many Shakespearean plays on the stage. Whilst heralding Freddie it is the directors who should be taking the highest plaudits for their imaginative interpretation and inspirational touches.