THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY

The War of the Roses

 

David Warner and Peggy Ashcroft

 

Directed by John Barton and Peter Hall

Cast:

Peggy Ashcroft Margaret of Anjou
David Warner Henry VI
William Squire/Michael Craig Suffolk
Donald Sinden The Duke of York
Brewster Mason Warwick
Ian Holm Gloucester/Richard III
Clive Swift Cade
Roy Dotrice Bedford/Edward IV
Janet Suzman La Pucelle/Lady Anne

From:
The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades
by Sally Beauman (Oxford 1982)

From:
Peggy Ashcroft
by Michael Billington (John Murray 1988)

Sally Beauman:
John Barton followed the lead of the few companies who had previously attempted these neglected plays by editing them heavily. But he did more than that, he condensed four Shakespeare plays (the Henry VI trilogy and Richard III) into three, which were titled Henry VI, Edward IV and Richard III, and this involved intensive reworking, and in some cases rewriting, of the text. From the 12,350 lines of Shakespeare's four plays only just over half remained, to which over 1,400 lines of cod-Elizabethan verse by Barton were added. Barton had to tighten the narrative line drastically; his version reduced the complexities of the plays and heightened one aspect of them above all ? the study they presented of intricate political power.

John Bury's sets were on a huge scale, and strongly schematic. The plays were about war and warring politics, as well as endless and increasingly vicious, senseless battles, and the steel-floored staging presented the very image of Armageddon. Both sets and costumes had a curiously timeless quality, suggestive not just of these wars but also of more recent combats. Certain images dominated the productions, the most memorable being the celebrated council table which enabled the directors to show swiftly and succinctly the fluctuations of power. The playing was sharp, unromantic, and fast, so that the narrative of the plays was propelled forward at a relentless pace.

Clive Swift (center back)
in the Cade Rebellion scene

Michael Billington:
At the moment when this huge project that would occupy twelve weeks of rehearsal was about to crank into operation, Peter Hall collapsed from a combination of overwork and personal stress. It was Peggy Ashcroft, with the aid of Peter Brook and John Barton, who helped bring Peter Hall back from the brink and ensure that the show got on the road.

John Barton and his young assistant, Frank Evans, kicked off the twelve-week rehearsal process. Hall joined as soon as possible, suffering from desperate lassitude and often conducting proceedings from a couch with a doctor in attendance. For everyone it was a huge undertaking, but Peggy Ashcroft carried one of the biggest burdens of all: moving in the course of three plays from the willful, alluring, 25-year-old Margaret of Anjou to a wrinkled septuagenarian witch haunting the court of Richard III like a dark chorus.

Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Squire

Peggy Ashcroft

The success of the production owed a lot to Peggy Ashcroft?but also to David Warner's lean, gangling, Dostoyevskyan holy fool of a king; to the massive, overbearing pride of Brewster Mason's Warwick the Kingmaker; to the nobility in humiliation of Donald Sinden's Duke of York?

David Warner

As Richard III, Ian Holm grew from the cunning whelp in Edward IV into a debauched, snickering psychopath and midget Hitler backed by the tramping iron guards of Catesby. It was a performance that grew steadily in power?

Ian Holm

There was little confidence amongst the company at the time that they were in a guaranteed success. The production had been faced with many problems such as the last-minute arrival of the final script and Peter Hall's crisis. The company had been working flat-out ten hours a day seven days a week. They were at the point of exhaustion and, after a fiasco of a final dress rehearsal, Peter Hall had to rally his tired troops like Henry V. Would the public take to over six hours of unremitting political gangsterdom? Would the critics accept Shakespeare rewritten and reordered?

The first two parts of the trilogy, Henry IV and Edward IV, opened at Stratford over a matinée and evening performance on 17 July 1963. The company drew on every ounce of reserve energy and the cheering at the end told them that they had a huge success on their hands. The notices the next day confirmed the fact.

The War of the Roses was a landmark for the theatre at large. It defined Peter Hall's ideas about the vitality of the company principle and proved the indispensibility of the RSC at the very moment, in August 1963, when Sir Fordham Flower was announcing to the governors an overall deficit of £47,000. In its examination of the nature of violence, it paved the way for Peter Brook's Theatre of Cruelty experiments which were to prove so controversial in 1964. And, not least, it restored critical and academic interest in the neglected group of plays.

Sally Beauman:
Almost everyone connected with the RSC at that time, Peter Hall included, considered the War of the Roses the pinnacle of the company's achievements.

Michael Billington:
The only problem with The War of the Roses from the point of view of Peggy Ashcroft and other cricket-buffs within the company was that it clashed with an enthralling Test series between England and the West Indies. Stratford legend has it that she solved the problem at one performance (in pre-Sony Walkman days) by wedging a tiny transistor under Margaret's battle-helmet so that she could hear the score and replay it, at appropriate moments, to her army.

David Warner, Donald Sinden and Brewster Mason

 

The War of the Roses was shown on the BBC in 1966.

David Warnerin the BBC movie

 

Louise Hansen
September 1999

 

If you have any information about the play and/or the BBC movie, please
email me.

 

Links:

David Warner, a Tribute by Louise Hansen
Ian Holm