SOURCE: Jackson, Russell. “Review of Henry V.” Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 1 (spring 2001): 107-32.

In the following review, Jackson details the somber wartime setting and cynical mood of Edward Hall's 2000 production of Henry V at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Edward Hall's production of Henry V, with designs by Michael Pavelka, was a story told in a time of war by modern soldiers. When the audience entered the theater, men and women in gray fatigues and tee shirts, all wearing metal identity tags, were sitting or wandering around the stage in a state of half-busy, half-idle expectancy. Some were checking equipment, others writing letters home. At the back of the stage, in front of a sheer brick wall, was a gantry resembling a dockside crane. A clutter of gray ammunition and equipment boxes occupied the downstage area, which was covered with a gray silk cloth, a red cross at its center. A mobile phone...