‘Henry and 250 Supers’: Irving, Robespierre and the Staging of the Revolutionary Crowd

Peter Brook, in The Empty Space, famously described his ‘acid test’ of memorable theatre:

When a performance is over, what remains?… The event scorches on the memory an outline, a taste, a trace, a smell – a picture. It is the play's central image that remains, its silhouette… When years later I think of a striking theatrical experience I find a kernel engraved on my memory. ¹