Henry V

Damian Lewis is on the fact of it surpise casting for the lead of Shakespeare’s Henry V, being almost double the age of the English king at the Battle of Agincourt. But one assumes casting an actor who can play the usually wet-behind-the-ears monarch as a jaded older guy is the entire point of the first production of Rupert Goold’s tenure at the Old Vic. We don’t know a lot about it beyond Lewis’s casting, but it’s described as a ‘provocative’ production and let’s be honest, former Almeida boss Goold is not going to let his tenure at the centuries-old south London theatre start with anything less than a bang. Whatever the case, Henry V – a popular choice as a first play for new ADs – is one of Shakespeare’s most fascinatingly malleablke works, equally playable as jingoistic pro-English propaganda as it is damning condemnation of war and those who would wage it.