York Shakespeare Project director Maggie Smales presents all-female Henry V as staged by the Barnbow Lasses at Leeds munitions factory

She will stage Henry V at the Upstage Centre Theatre, 41 Monkgate, from October 21 to 31, the period covering the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt.

For YSP's 28th show, Maggie has set Henry V during the First World War at the Barnbow munitions factory, just outside Leeds, where its female workforce re-enact Shakespeare's history play as they explore the meaning of war through Shakespeare’s own discourse.

"Shakespeare presents Henry V, played by Claire Morley, as a king who matches the idealised national hero while also revealing another less appealing side of his character on more than one occasion," says Maggie. "His play shows us Henry set in context of the full spectrum of class and rank and it's as much about the experiences of war for the people living through it as it is about those who wage it."

Maggie Smales directing rehearsals for York Shakespeare Project's Henry V. Picture: John Saunders

Maggie's all-female ensemble is modelled on the Elizabethan tradition of a single gender company. In keeping with Shakespeare's own company of players featuring only men in all the roles, whether female or male, so YSP has a troupe who will do the same. Move over the Lord Chamberlains Men and The King's Men, however. Make way for The Barnbow Lasses.

Possibly the largest munitions factory in Europe, the Barnbow factory employed 18,000 women and girls from all over Yorkshire, not least York, from where they were put on trains directly to the factory.

A job at Barnbow meant economic independence but with it came danger: an explosion in December 1916 completely destroyed a factory shed, leaving 35 dead and many more severely injured. Only recently has the memory of these women and girls been honoured by a commemorative stone laid near where the factory buildings once stood.

YSP's production is an opportunity for York to remember its rather forgotten "heroes", the munitionettes. "I want to produce an evocative and exciting piece of theatre which also recognises the sacrifices that women made," says Maggie. "The fact that some of the women who lost their lives were local makes this all the more poignant."

Rosy Rowley's Pistol and Claire Morley's Henry V . Picture: Michael J Oakes

She has decided on a three-sided set, a thrust design that will make for an immersive experience for the audience, caught up in the crossfire of war.
 

"We have to progress the play's world from being in a munitions factory to being in Henry V, and we have a narrative device for that without needing to add any text," she says.

"Claire Morley's character opens a package containing news of the death of a loved one, and within that package too is a bloodied officer's jacket, in which the other girls dress her when they give her her role and so she becomes Henry V."

Maggie is keen that the factory munitionettes "should not lose their sense of their selves" in the play. "You should always still be aware they are munitionettes at crucial moments, so the battle of Agincourt will be layered with the 1916 explosion at Barnbow. There'll be the combination of English victory at Agincourt but French loss and the loss of life at Barnbow, which tempers the sense of victory," she says.

"Henry died seven years later; we lost France; business as usual. What a waste. So we want to replicate that feeling of it being the end of the First World War, but the Second World War would not be long after, and women from the same families would be working in the munitions factory again."

Maggie recalls the thinking behind her submission to direct this autumn's YSP show. "I was thinking, 'why would you do an all-female Shakespeare?' and my head was full of the First World War at the time. The war liberated women into doing things they would never normally have done; doing jobs they didn't do before; playing in football teams; and they became financially independent for the first time. In fact, servicemen were sometimes rude to them because some of them would have been earning more than they were."

The munitions were made at Crossgates, where incidentally cows were kept because it was believed milk was an antidote to the poisons. "The factory was a 24-hour operation; the women had no holidays; they were slaves to the factory, but it did give them a different path," says Maggie.

York Shakespeare Project in rehearsal for Henry V. Picture: Michael J Oakes

She believes Shakespeare's play will stand up to her new examination. "It's a play that over the years has been done in different ways, such as Olivier's 1944 film version being a piece of wartime propaganda, but his stage version was quite different.

"It's one of those plays that people think they know well, but actually they don't. They know it from the films or productions they've seen. In the Iraq War, American soldiers were issued with copies of Shakespeare's play, but did the generals take note of the full text? Olivier's film was an edited version that didn't show the barbarism or the cruel excesses of Henry V and the last part of the play was entirely cut out."

York Shakespeare Project presents Henry V at Upstage Centre Youth Theatre, 41 Monkgate, York, from October 21 to 31, 7.30pm (except October 25), plus 2.30pm, October 24 and 31, and 3pm, October 25. Tickets: £12, concessions £10, on 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk