Player Kings review: a 'luxurious feast' of theatre
Ian McKellen offers a 'richly complex' performance that deserves to be seen

Recalling Ralph Richardson's famed performance as Sir John Falstaff in a 1945 production at the Old Vic, Kenneth Tynan wrote that it had been "too rich and many-sided to be crammed into a single word". I felt the same about Ian McKellen's Falstaff in this slick, modern-dress adaptation of Henry IV Parts I & II, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian.
Donning a fatsuit to play Shakespeare's antihero for the first time, aged 84, McKellen gives us a Falstaff who is "tragic almost from the start": a "pub drunk, and in soiled shirt and braces"; a "wheeler-dealer, wheezing and snorting, adenoidal and dyspeptic". Rather than a "carnivalesque" figure, this Falstaff is a "carnival grotesque": it's a "radically moving" and "richly complex" performance that deserves to be seen.
Director Robert Icke is known for his "thrilling reinventions or rewrites of classics", said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. For this condensation of the two plays, which runs to over three hours, he has "neatly" streamlined the raucous and violent power struggles of Part I, and pruned Part II of some (but perhaps not enough) of its "waffling jokes and rueful diminuendo". What emerges is a "luxurious feast" of theatre that shows how the plays still speak to our times, by asking "what it means to be a man and a monarch, and whether we should dedicate our lives to duty or pleasure".
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
McKellen is "magnificent", said Sarah Hemming in the FT. Toheeb Jimoh is excellent, too, as Prince Hal, combining "youthful zest" with a ruthless streak and a stubborn refusal to face his future. And there are several "wonderful" supporting turns, not least from Clare Perkins as a fierce, funny Mistress Quickly. But while Icke's staging has a "vivid immediacy", his cuts come at a cost: the grievances of the rebels are not always easy to follow, and "some of the comic warmth" is lost from the second half.
It makes the production less engaging than it might be, said Clive Davis in The Times. But whenever McKellen is onstage, this adaptation comes "bustling to life".
Noël Coward Theatre, London WC2 (0344-482 5151). Until 22 June, then touring.
Sign up to the Culture & Life newsletter for reviews and recommendations
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
October 13 editorial cartoons
Cartoons Monday's political cartoons include Donald Trump's consolation prize, government workers during shutdown, and more
-
Can Gaza momentum help end the war in Ukraine?
Today's Big Question Zelenskyy’s request for long-range Tomahawk missiles hints at ‘warming relations’ between Ukraine and US
-
The Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners being released
The Explainer Triumphant Donald Trump addresses the Israeli parliament as families on both sides of the Gaza war reunite with their loved ones
-
The delightful, smutty world of Jilly Cooper
In the Spotlight Millions mourn the ‘Mrs Kipling of sex’
-
Lee Miller at the Tate: a ‘sexy yet devastating’ show
The Week Recommends The ‘revelatory’ exhibition tells the photographer’s story ‘through her own impeccable eye’
-
6 eye-catching rounded homes
Feature Featuring a central spiral staircase in Michigan and a Balinese-style estate with ocean views in Hawaii
-
A House of Dynamite: a ‘nail-biting’ nuclear-strike thriller
The Week Recommends ‘Virtuoso talent’ Kathryn Bigelow directs a ‘fast-paced’ and ‘tense’ ‘symphony of dread’
-
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: a ‘haunting’ history of modern Afghanistan
The Week Recommends Lyse Doucet’s sensitively written work traces over 50 years of Kabul’s ‘Inter-Con’ hotel
-
The Smashing Machine: Dwayne Johnson is ‘magnetic’ in gritty biopic
The Week Recommends The wrestler-turned-Hollywood-actor takes on the role of troubled UFC champion Mark Kerr
-
Shadow Ticket: Thomas Pynchon’s first novel in over a decade
The Week Recommends Zany whodunnit about a private eye in 1930s Milwaukee could be the 88-year-old author’s ‘last hurrah’
-
Southern barbecue: This year’s top three
Feature A weekend-only restaurant, a 90-year-old pitmaster, and more