Those with a hankering for stirring speeches and words spoken trippingly on the tongue might find reasons to be disappointed by Bell Shakespeare’s latest foray into Shakespeare’s Henry V.

This staging, directed by Marion Potts, is more in tune with the nature of conflict in the 21st century than the 15th and wars more likely to be settled with a shabby deal than won by battlefield heroics.

Bell Shakespeare’s Henry 5. Photo © Brett Boardman

Played in an arena whose main feature is a long metal structure that can be dismantled into useful shapes (an Anna Tregloan design), Potts has cast this cut-down version with relatively fresh faces, some of whom have had little stage time in productions at this scale. It does, however, highlight the truism that war is always fuelled by the bodies of the young.

Doubling the role of Chorus and Westmoreland, Alex Kirwan’s delivery of the play’s famous “muse of fire” speech sets the stage for production whose rhetoric is set to ‘mute’. Playing Henry, the charismatic JK Kazzi can sometimes sound mechanical in his speeches, lacking some rhythmic variation and emotional bandwidth. Henry’s bloodcurdling address to besieged Harfleur...