Simon Ward reviews English Kings Killing Foreigners at Camden People’s Theatre

What is it with theatre makers and audience participation these days? Here it’s of the gentlest, even ironic, kind. I have a vivid memory of the late Anthony Sher bringing the house down as he descended into the audience, took a seat and declared ‘I hope this isn’t one of those plays with audience participation!’ The interaction here is just as funny, and it is actually great fun. The point of it, I think, is to implicate us in the unfolding scenes. The play is a kind of fly-on-the-wall encounter with two actors, Phil and Nina, who are due to be working together on a production of Shakespeare’s Henry V, and we are eavesdropping.

Devised, written and co-directed by the cast – Philip Arditti, who is of Jewish-Turkish heritage, and Nina Bowers, a mixed-race Canadian – it feels heartfelt, quite raw and very much grounded in real-life experience. It explores the very idea of being an actor – what that means for your sense of self, and what sacrifices you make simply in order to work. As the play begins, Nina is about to embark on her first acting role and is keen to make a good impression, whereas Phil is a more seasoned professional. They both arrive late for their rehearsal and they are literally locked out. Is this a metaphor for the exclusion of non-white, non-English actors, or people, from the classical Shakespearean world? This is what they go on to investigate in an hour of twists and turns which leaves us questioning everything. All our certainities and convictions are challenged, and every truth of which we may have been uncomfortably aware, is brought out for scrutiny under the spotlight. This sounds gruelling, and at times, it is, but it is leavened by much humour, and it makes us think deeply.

Nina has a diatribe at one point against the RADA-trained mafia who control the industry and either pigeonhole global majority actors into stereotypically ‘ethnic’ roles – Phil is to play the part of Chorus as a Turkish kebab-shop owner – or go the other way and parade their virtue by casting a mixed race woman as Henry V. What is theatre for and indeed, who decides? No doubt Shakespeare’s histories were partly written with the aim of shoring up the monarchy of his day, and Henry V has been used to rally the nation ever since – for example, in Lawrence Olivier’s famous 1944 film, as Britain was wearying of the long years of war. How does that relate to a post-Brexit, post-Windrush Britain today? With flag-waving patriotism being used to close down dissent, what part does Shakespeare have to play?

No-one emerges unscathed from what is an unflinchingly truthful piece. And there are no easy answers here. But the questions are compelling, and asked in subtle and insightful ways. This invigorating, passionate, sharp, funny and paradoxically joyful, show demonstrates in itself the power of theatre to challenge and energise an audience.

English Kings Killing Foreigners runs at Camden People’s Theatre, 58-60 Hampstead Road, London NW1 2PY until Saturday 11th May