English Kings Killing Foreigners is a new script by two dyed-in-the-wool Shakespearean actors with the potential to become era-defining, identity-conscious theatre. Running at Camden People’s Theatre until 11 May, the play feels both raw and polished, and still in evolution.
Nina and Philip play themselves as two bit-part actors turning up for rehearsals of a contemporary production of Henry V. This particular one is an “English anti-fascist nationalist kebab shop reimagining of the Second World War,” set in a future where England invades France to save the French from themselves after far-right parties have taken over the country’s democratic institutions.
The key ingredient, thought, is the dialogue between the two, exploring their identities as British-trained classical actors living and working in the UK but with roots that stretch far beyond it. They both chose to come and live in the UK and enter the profession in their late teens. Nina is mixed-race Canadian-British and Philip is Turkish of Jewish descent: they tell us this in the play because it matters to the play.
Henry V, in which the young king carries his sense of entitlement to French territories all the way to victory in the battle of Agincourt is the most jingoistic of Shakespeare’s history plays. Philip finds ways to remind us that the play was performed to coincide with a political need to reinforce a sense of British identity and patriotism: in 1901 it was the Boer War and the actor-director was William Poel; in 1944 it was World War II and the obliging thesp was Laurence Olivier; in 1989, during the dog days of the Cold War, Kenneth Branagh directs and performs Henry V.
English Kings Killing Foreigners is a brief and plucky play that packs a lot into a short narrative arc. A dig at extreme “concept productions” reimagining of the classics? Postcolonial Shakespeare? An indictment of stereotypical race casting in the entertainment industry? Racial tokenism in the performing arts? A send-up of RADA? Shakespearean actors making fun of their own self-importance? Take your pick. All the elements for English Kings Killing Foreigners to evolve into an even bolder script and transfer to the West End are there: the time is right.
• English Kings Killing Foreigners, written and directed by Nina Bowers and Philip Arditti, is on at the Camden People’s Theatre until 11 May