The Wars of the Roses

3/20/2024

Peter Hall really has worked these four plays together well and building on a really convincing performance from David Warner offers us a grand amalgam of Shakespeare's Henry VI and Richard III plays. There's history, tragedy, and comedy a-plenty as the tale starts amidst the Hundred Years War between England and France. Ostensibly, Henry VI (Warner) was king of both territories but that did little for the unity or stability of either. It is fair to say that the bard made the King into something a little lacking in politics or sharpness and with his increasingly conniving and vengeful wife Margaret of Anjou (Peggy Ashcroft) at his side we follow a story of manipulation, intrigue, betrayal, murder - indeed just about every vice known to humankind - all elements for which the King was ill-eq