ABSTRACT
I can date with some precision the moment I learned what a designer does in the theatre: twenty past seven, 11 July 1977, the opening night of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s revival of Terry Hands’ Henry V. Until then, the stage was bare, like a rehearsal room, the actors in rehearsal gear. But when the French Ambassador entered, an aristo in court costume, the under-dressed English began to shift uneasily, bristling at the stranger’s hauteur, the arrogance with which he introduced into their visual poverty the Dauphin’s elaborate gift, a gilded coffer that opened to present a curious ‘engine’, a mechanical hand flourishing-a tennis ball. King Harry’s crooked, boyish smile froze. ‘This mock of his/Hath turned his balls to gunstones,’ he announced
dryly. It was then that the scene exploded. From the flies dropped a massive canopy; it caught the air with a roar like flame seeking oxygen and billowed open to hang over the action, a gorgeous, terrible mushroom cloud that literalized imperial ambition and made politics explicit. Blazoned in red, blue, gold, in lions rampant and fleur de lys, it represented, materially, the arms of France and England, and held out to the aspiring conqueror’s reach the ‘crowns imperial…/ Promis’d to Harry and his followers.’ ‘Now sits Expectation in the air,’ crowed the Chorus. The canopy reified Expectation. Later (like Expectation) it fell, covering the stage in a vast expanse of grey canvas underbelly, the mud of Agincourt-adventurism turned bleakly unheroic-side out. Camped centre stage and longing for the dawn that would bring the battle, the effete French lounged in a circle of light, stroking their plumed crests and high-gloss armour while, around them, in the shadows, the wretched English in filthy battle fatigues, St George crosses faded to the colour of dried blood, hugged the canvas mud and tried to sleep.
