DRAMA
F ortunately, it was a bright and sunny day, unlike at the actual Battle of Agincourt, where it rained so hard and the ground became so boggy that the heavily armoured French soldiers could barely move, and all it took for the English to win was to walk up to them and cut them down where they stood. Our promenade production opened on the South Gravel, processing round so that the lawn in front of the Laboratory became the battlefield. In 1914, performers wore evening dress and The Alleynian observed that, ‘the audience as a whole was not interested, regarding Shakespeare as a back number and having no gay costumes to attract the eye’. This cast had neither problem, for they were colourfully clad in reds and blues, with green for the Welshmen, and the audience was rapt. There were other challenges, however, for the cast hit a few bumps. There was one terrifying moment when one of the narrators forgot their lines just before Henry V’s great ‘once more unto the breach’ speech, in which there was an unhealthy pause before he remembered his lines and the play was able to continue. Josh McConnell in the role of Fluellen mastered a great Welsh accent, and really captured the anger when he was slapped in the face just before the battle. There was a moving scene between swaggering Pistol, his Boy and their captured French Soldier, Fred Robb, Charlie McNeil and Tommy Taylor respectively. Miss Prendergast worked wonders with the Prologue, a quintet of Charlie Leithead, Finlay Fisher, Ollie Hoare, Alfie Cook and Toby Evans, so they created pictures in the air with physicality as well as words. The Lords ‘acquitted themselves as valiantly as the heat would permit them’ and they can consider themselves fortunate not to have to wear stiff, high collars as in 1914 (and there was plenty of water alongside the long bows on the cart! One 1914 touch was copied, Fluellen’s wicket keeping glove in his tunic. HENRY V Last Founder’s Day, a company of 26 Lower School boys performed excerpts from Shakespeare’s Henry V . In a happy coincidence, this took place on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt and came 101 years after scenes from the play were staged on Founder’s Day in 1914. William Brilliant (Year 9) recalls a sunny day with a few bumps
Note: William himself played Henry V. The Alleynian who did so in 1914 ‘blundered once or twice’ and ‘was too jumpy and did not give sufficient pause at the stops’. Our Henry never lost the ‘music with its harmony of thought, words and rhythm so it became muddy’. Neither did he miss the passion of the cry ‘Good God! Why should they mock poor fellows thus?’ as had happened a century before. William was both stirring and commanding in his mastery of three inspiring speeches. Maggie Jarman
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