Review of The Second Part of Henry the Sixth

If a time machine could take us back to the Globe where this play was first performed, this, I believe, is how it would have looked. The "wooden 'O'" is created again for this lusty Beeb production, and we are treated to a gripping 3+ hours of high-flown politicking in sinewy blank verse. The exposition of a complex period of British history - the build-up to the Wars of the Roses - is admirably clear and so well told! At first we have the nobles conspiring against the thoroughly decent Humphrey, the king's protector (David Burke, bone honest), who, let down by a Lady Macbeth-like wife, is strangled while in the custody of malign Cardinal Beaufort (formidable Frank Middlemass), who himself then dies horribly of remorse. The scheming Suffolk (audaciously lofty Paul Chapman) is executed by pirates, and the Queen cries for revenge while cradling his severed head: Julia Foster, who used to be an insipid actress, has a bold stab at Margaret of Anjou ('she-wolf of France'), while the weird but beautifully spoken Peter Benson as her pious, ineffectual husband King Henry prays and laments. Trevor Peacock is a terrific Jack Cade (with Burke, again, as his henchman) in electrifying scenes of riot and rebellion in the City of London.Towards the end the Duke of York (Bernard Hill), the king's most powerful adversary, returns from Ireland with an army and his three sons, the youngest being deformed Richard, soon to be Richard III. All the while Warwick the King-Maker (Mark Wing-Davey) is waiting in the wings: I can hardly wait for Part Three!