The inventive use of the theatrical space constantly fills the eye, almost to the point that it is hard to savor all that occurs. The English costumes are a kind of medieval outlaw biker chic, with a sprinkle of Mad Max (though they become a little Ozwold Boateng in the final scene). They draw exclusively from a pallet of black, grey, and battle-dulled silver. One effect of this is to make the gold crown on Henry's head a focal point, like the North Star in a winter's sky. The English are of the earth, they inhabit the ground, both on it and under it. The stage's manifold trap doors become tunnels, trenches, or hidey-holes of surprise, effective for both comedy and pathos, and they help portray the English as the French see them: savage but moribund.

The French aristocracy meanwhile flies high, their feet literally never touching the ground. They spend virtually the entire play on a gaily decked trapeze, entering and exiting by ascending and descending. The Chorus hovers on a levitating piano, clothed in columbine, royal blue, and heavily ornate gold brocade. They preen and pose like exotic caged birds, resplendent in huge swallow-tailed coats.

The Dauphin, played by John Mackay, is a treat, a flouncing, petulant, truculent she-male, arrogant, heartless, viciously effeminate, more Marie Antoinette than Vercingetorix. The French King Charles VI, played by Sandy Neilson, is by contrast stoic and statesmanlike, pragmatic but morose. The contrast when the king addresses his court is like Moses presiding over the Scissor Sisters. The ethereal nature of the French court gives a surreal edge to the effusive praise the Dauphin bestows upon his steed: Caligula would have blushed.

The episcopal justification for war is handled with great humor. Geoffrey Freshwater's Archbishop of Canterbury, delivering his opinion, reminds one of nothing more than Sir Humphrey's convoluted loquacious verbosity in Yes Minister. The scene is not just humorous but telling: while the opinion is delivered, Exeter, Westmoreland, and the rest of the court look on with a mixture of boredom and confusion, but Henry is totally rapt. Then he asks the only question he is really interested in: 'May I with right and conscience make this claim?' Giving the only acceptable answer, Canterbury responds, 'the sin is upon my head, dread sovereign'.

We are dragged from comedy to potential slaughter, as the court suddenly becomes like the youth of England: on fire. Henry is the ever-plausible regular guy, his fist of steel well shrouded by the velvet glove of rhetoric. The great speeches (rousing or hollow depending on your view) are delivered without Olivian zeal: you do not expect him to rip his still-beating heart out of his chest with studded gauntlet to prove his spirit. Henry's delivery is one of measured emphasis, picking out the memorable phrases and offering them to us like well-crafted sound bites. This Henry is best captured by Bloom's memorable encapsulation: 'brutally shrewd and shrewdly brutal'. It is this Henry whom Geoffrey Streatfield brings to life with such charismatic vigor.