There’s a lot of Shakespeare about at the moment thanks to the World Shakespeare Festival, from Globe to Globe to the season of plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National’s rare stab at Timon of Athens coming soon. For anyone feeling somewhat overwhelmed, the theatre company Propeller aim to take it all down a notch with the latest in their series of pocket productions.
Previous Pocket Propeller shows have whittled down A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy of Errors. Pocket Henry V is adapted from Propeller’s full-length production of the play which premiered in November 2011. Directed once again by Edward Hall, and starring Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, it will sprint from soup to nuts in one hour. Touring begins in September, just as the World Shakespeare Festival is ending, and takes in Tunbridge Wells, Canterbury, Farnham Maltings, Chipping Norton, Eastleigh and Great Yarmouth, all of them towns which don’t necessarily get to see high-end professional productions of Shakespeare all that often. It will also tour to several schools in the South East. (Prospective punters may wish to be advised that Propeller’s USP is its all-male casting policy.)
Propeller’s full-scale version of Henry V continues until July.