SOURCE: Jackson, Russell. “‘This England’: Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon, Winter 2000-2001.” Shakespeare Quarterly 52, no. 3 (2001): 383-92.

In the following essay, Jackson reviews Michael Boyd's December 2000-January 2001 Royal Shakespeare Company staging of Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III. The critic contends that the production's greatest achievement “lay in its evocation of a world turned to chaos.”

The three parts of Henry VI and Richard III, staged in the Swan Theatre during December 2000 and January 2001, were directed by Michael Boyd and designed by Tom Piper, with lighting by Heather Carson and music by James Jones. These artists should be credited in full, in honor of their achievement in providing a framework—physical, aural, emotional, and intellectual—for the cycle. The staging of these plays has proved, even more than the first part of “This England,” that the Royal Shakespeare Company can make a return to the principles of ensemble nowhere better...