"Henry VI Part 3". Jesus College Shakespeare Project

This was more than a production of a single Shakespeare play. It was the culmination of twelve months of productions. The Jesus College Shakespeare Project, with director Peter Sutton at the helm, has spent this entire academic year serving up Henry VIs: Part One in Michaelmas Term, Part Two in Hilary, and finally Part Three tonight. This project-within-a-project has stuck with the same company of actors, the same production style and staging, and even the same costumes throughout the three plays, achieving a consistency that you almost never see across such a span of time. It’s not uncommon for companies to perform all three plays together. But doing it one at a time like this, on a solar cycle that moves with the seasons, gives the entire trilogy a sense of unstoppable momentum, almost like waiting for the next Lord of the Rings film to come out (sorry if you’re too young to know how exciting that was). With Tarquin’s ravishing stride the Jesus Shakespeare Project has moved through the past year, like a ghost.

Part Three was a fitting climax. Powerful, grounded, clear as a bell, the actors nailed this play with passion and dignity in equal measure. There were no claims of radical reinterpretation: it was about as ‘straight’ a production as you’re likely to see. But for one of Shakespeare’s less-well-known plays, simply watching and understanding is enough. The traverse staging meant that the audience, in only two rows each side, was close to the action, and we felt immersed in it. When Clifford brutally kills the infant Rutland the clash of cruelty and innocence was almost too painful to watch – and it was amplified by Clifford (Eddie Laurence) determinedly refusing to look Rutland in the eye throughout the scene.

This is a play filled with moments of such crisis, and every one of them was a thrill. That immersive proximity led to a sense of intimacy that humanised the inhuman acts on stage. This was intimacy of torture, as Margaret of Anjou stuffs a handkerchief stained with York’s own son’s blood into his helpless mouth. It was intimacy of abuse as Prince Edward shouts with unmistakeable double entendre, ‘Thou misshapen Dick!’ at the future Richard III. It was intimacy of violence as character after character breathed their last virtually on the audience’s shoelaces. And it was intimacy of coercion as Edward of York gives Lady Grey no choice but to accept his hand in marriage.

As the programme notes point out, two weeks after the coronation of King Charles III is a great time to stage a play focussed so strongly on succession. And it was easy to imagine, if our own Royals had been around six hundred years ago, that Prince Harry, harbouring a grudge on his flight back to the USA, might have returned a few months later with his own army facing up against William’s. Thank goodness these wars are now fought out in the pages of the Daily Mail rather than the fields of England. But in addition to the foreshadows of our contemporary monarchy, the division of the country into white and red, York and Lancaster, carried Brexit resonances of our battered and divided population.

The one nod to modernism was the inclusion of a new character: Chaos, personified in the figure of actor Jess Steadman, who was on stage throughout, watching the turmoil unfold, and dropping rose petals on the dead bodies. Steadman featured in Part One as Joan of Arc and in Part Two as Jack Cade, both of them larger-than-life rebels, splinters in the flesh of the plays. There is no comparable role in Part Three, so this was a clever way to reincorporate her. I’m not sure it entirely worked as an idea since, as she was wordless, she felt deprived of the one thing that so defines that pair of irrepressible personalities from the first two plays: speech. But this is purely a matter of opinion, and at a company (rather than production) level, including such a crucial member of the team from the earlier plays fits perfectly. The overall impression is of a repertory family overflowing with mutual love and respect.

I have to mention the final moments, as they were a genuine, and joyful, coup de theatre. After Richard dispatched Henry in the Tower of London the entire cast somewhat scurrilously burst into a rendition of ‘God Save the King’, at the end of which Richard went straight into his next line, which is of course the opening speech of Shakespeare’s next play, ‘Now is the winter of our discontent…’. But after that one phrase had been uttered, the director shouted, ‘To be continued!’ – and that was the end. It felt almost like a bedtime storyteller saying, ‘That’s all we’ve got time for tonight’, leaving the listeners begging for more. Or even the end of a 007 movie, when those enticing words appear on screen, ‘James Bond will be back…’

Fortunately Kate Harkness will be back next term once again in the role of Richard III (which is good news, as she was terrific). And if you thought Shakespeare was getting carried away with the murders in Henry VI, believe me, he’s just getting started.