A glorious moment

8.27.00pm GMT Sun 16th Mar 2008

Over the weekend I was in Stratford-upon-Avon seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company's 'Glorious Moment'. The Glorious Moment was the name given to seeing Shakespeare's histories in order.

On Thursday evening I saw Richard II, Friday was Henry IV part one and part two followed by Henry V, Saturday was a Henry VI-fest with parts one, two and three. Sunday saw the culmination with Richard III.

Michael Boyd directed all eight plays, Richard II was played by Jonathan Slinger, Henry IV by Clive Wood, Henry V by Geoffrey Streatfeild, Henry VI by Chuk Iwuji and Richard III by Jonathan Slinger. Clearly there were many more, too many to name - 34 actors in fact playing between them playing 264 roles across the 8 plays. The histories cycle has been running for two years and will run for just a little longer but has now moved to London to complete the cycle.

All the plays were excellent. My only small gripe (and it is a very small gripe) is that Richard III was played in modern dress, normally this would be fine but as I was seeing them as a set I would have preferred them all to either be traditional or modern.