Michael Hattaway

"Much of the action takes place on an almost clinically bare stage, and the fear and violence in the usurping Duke's court, where everyone wears formal black Elizabethan dress, is chilling. With his lame eye and air of festering resentment, Sandy Neilson's Duke Frederick has a touch of the psychotic about him ... Boyd ... shows us the bloody reality of rural life as the shepherd Corin (excellent Geoffrey Freshwater) slowly skins and beheads a dead...

Shakespeare's historical play which recreates Henry's early days as King. Centers on the French wars and the activities of Joan of Arc, while glimpsing the beginning of the civil wars between the Houses of Lancaster and York.