One city, two great writers

It was a strange kind of a day. A day of sorrow, of reflection, of anticipation. On the morning after the death of Seamus Heaney one of Belfast’s theatres was planning an impromptu memorial while another was opening its doors early, in advance of a 10-hour immersion in the work of another great writer.

The switchboard of the Lyric Theatre was jammed after an open invitation was issued to an evening of remembrance for an inspirational life lost. For everyone connected with the Lyric it has been impossible to escape the inner sound of that wise, gentle voice sounding over the unveiling of its threshold stone. On a September morning four years ago Heaney read a verse from Peter Street at Bankside, a poem he composed in 1965 for the foundation of the original building. Its final line resonates strongly at this time: "Here all the world's an act, a word, an echo."

There was serious business in hand at the Grand Opera House, too. Few companies can do Shakespeare quite as effectively as the Globe, whose circular, thatched-roofed stage beside the Thames in London was the playwright's own stamping ground. Its ambitious production of the three parts of Henry VI – here called Harry the Sixth, The Houses of York and Lancaster and The True Tragedy of the Duke of York – has been out and about around England, playing on the battlefields where some of the bloodiest conflicts in the country's history took place.

Although it was written more than 400 years ago, the trilogy offers a powerful portrayal of 21st-century political conflicts, popular uprisings and state-organised massacres.

Mixed with grief for Heaney was a sense of shared resolve among the Saturday-lunchtime audience, many of whom had signed up to watch all three plays presented in chronological order in a single day, with only a brief breathing space in between.

It is a bad idea to rely on Shakespeare’s history plays for factual accuracy. They compress time, skim over boring bits, concentrate on the sensational and are entirely cavalier when it comes to dates. But, boy, do they make great stories.

This rarely performed trilogy is a case in point. As plays they are decidedly average. They were, after all, the earliest works of a young writer and were probably created in collaboration. Intended to stand independently, they were written out of sequence, with part one the last of the three.

But they capture a pivotal period in Anglo-French relations, and Nick Bagnall's muscular reworking is being justifiably compared with Peter Hall and John Barton's iconic adaptation of The Wars of the Roses – that is to say the three parts of Henry VI plus The Tragedy of King Richard III – for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1963.

Of necessity the set remains the same throughout. Yet hundreds of characters enter and exit, costumes hanging from metal frames are donned and discarded, drums and cymbals are sounded and silenced.

The central focus is a lofty wooden tower: a lookout post, reading room and precarious throne for Graham Butler’s baby-faced king. It is flanked by two metal scaffolds, which provide all manner of dramatic possibilities for battles, beheadings and betrayals. Surprisingly, however, it is this element that is the least satisfying of the whole affair. Their outcomes may be horrifying, but the encounters themselves register as tame, toothless and off target.

The deluge of fast-paced storytelling is accomplished by just 14 actors, who carry off this dizzying ensemble feat with tremendous flourish. Equally satisfying for the all-day audience is the way individual characterisations develop as the interlocking story lines unravel.

Most notable is Brendan O’Hea’s treacherous, articulate Richard Plantagenet, who comes within a hair’s breadth of emulating the king’s grandfather Henry IV in snatching the crown from weak ownership. Garry Cooper brings flinty strength and honesty to the Lord Protector, one of the few figures of integrity in the sorry mess that is the English royal court. And Roger Evans is a rabble rousing Jack Cade, diverting attention from the revolting Irish.

Women fare less well. Beatriz Romilly's plain-speaking, boyish Joan of Arc may be the human pulse of Harry the Sixth, but she is allowed only glimmers of credible intensity. Mary Doherty's androgynous, red-robed presence is a distraction until she comes into her own as a two-dimensional Margaret of Anjou, Henry's fiery queen.

With relatively little to work with, Graham Butler sensitively crafts a figure who has been a king since infancy, growing him from pious boy to diffident head of state and, finally, to doomed man of faith, capable of attracting the support of his desperate people.

Those familiar, ringing Shakespearean speeches may be a little thin on the ground, but the plays are far from devoid of resonance and frequently herald the great plays that were to come. Over Simon Harrison's leering, twisted Richard Duke of Gloucester hovers the spectre of yet more terrible times ahead for England. His sinister central presence cries out for a production of Richard III to be added to the trilogy, thereby bringing Shakespeare's take on the Wars of the Roses to a close.