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The Last Post: Henry V, War Culture and the Postmodern Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Robert Shaughnessy
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Extract

“Marketing, that mysterious part of the theatre industry, can produce surprising effects,” observes Peter Holland in his recent book on Shakespearean production in Britain during the 1990s. Discussing the material constraints on the repertory of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Holland cites the promotion of the 1994 production of Coriolanus as it transferred to the Barbican, which, knowingly addressed a “youth” market versed in the work of Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino. The RSC poster displayed a blood-soaked Toby Stephens in the title role, accompanied by the slogan “A natural born killer too.” For an even more surprising and mysterious example of optimistically modish marketing, consider the tactics of the newspaper advertisement announcing the 1996 season at Stratford-upon-Avon. Avoiding any direct mention of Shakespeare, his plays, or theatre, it pictured an ominously darkened cloudscape, with slogans projected onto it, almost like skywriting. These posed a question, “Virtual reality?” and a riposte: “Try the real thing.”

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Theatre Survey , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , May 1998 , pp. 41 - 61
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Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1998

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References

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53. As a postscript to the above, the 1994 Henry V was followed, with unusual swiftness, by a brash and poorly-received production at Stratford three years later. It is also worth noting that the inaugural production at the Bankside Globe the same year was a self-consciously “Elizabethan,” all-male Henry V, directed by Olivier's son.