Henry IV.i

Presented by the Melbourne University Shakespeare Company in April of 2016, this production imagined an alternative, feudal 21st-century England as the backdrop for Shakespeare's bruising deconstruction of power, family and legacy.

 

Taking up contemporary dynamics of media visibility and political performativity, this adaptation recast Henry as a Queen, a woman buckling under the pressure of embodying the uncompromising vision of monarchic power. Prince Hal became Princess Hal, a conflicted young woman torn between the burden of her birthright and the hedonistic freedom of her friend and mentor, Falstaff.

 

By turns violent, funny, and melancholic, this production scrutinised the tension between the public face of state violence and its brutal reality, probing what a person might forfeit of themselves in the pursuit of absolute power.