The three Henry VI plays are as full of political machinations as Alastair Campbell's diaries, but where the King of Spin's memoirs span ten years, Shakespeare's early works cram in more than 50 with a cast of hundreds (or 27 in this York community production).

Director Mark France and Julia Atkinson's adaptation has edited three plays into two, the first part entitled The Occupation, the second, Civil War. These three-hour epics run in consecutive performances that take Jonathan Bedford's Henry VI from twitchy boyhood to ever weaker, Bible-clutching man-child and Andy Curry's Crooked Back Richard from idealist to arch cynic, plotting his winter of discontent.

The Guildhall setting - a new location for YSP - is a constant reminder of York's past, chiming with the city's presence in the plays (or at least its walls to facilitate the beheaded Duke of York looking down on York). "Grumblin York" (Ged Murray, the pick of the older generation of actors) is omnipresent and so too is the white rose.

Yet France's masterstroke is to give the plays a 21st century setting with echoes of the Iraq conflict and materialistic power games.

The soldiers of France and England wear modern combat uniform; the Duke of York favours pinstripes; Cecily Boys' Margaret flicks her chic bob on a catwalk of French haute couture.

Henry V's gravestone is replaced by a News 24 TV screen with the latest headlines on weddings and beheadings; scaffolding and corrugated iron dominate Cath Doman's stage, impermanence amid the Guildhall stone and pillars. Victoria Bernath's Joan la Pucelle is Tank Girl with a French-Canadian accent and boots hotter than her exit at the stake.

Guns and searchlights, speeding police sirens and the whir of helicopters emphasise the modernity, although combat is conducted with swords, always accompanied by Kingsley Ash's blood-stirring metallic music.

The actors take time to adjust to the Guildhall's acoustic, but France uses the full room most effectively with entrances from side and rear to boost urgency, fear and surprise.

Don't be misled into thinking all this flashy theatre of war is a substitute for real drama in the manner of a Starlight Express. Granted, Shakespeare's cynical writing is not his most memorable, but France conjures a resonant theatrical event with political punch.

In Andy Curry, meanwhile, he has found a hot new talent for the York stage.


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