Steve Wright looks forward to Peter Hall’s eighth summer season at Theatre Royal Bath.

Peter Hall’s enjoyed a couple of landmark anniversaries of late. Last year was the great director’s 80th birthday, while this March saw the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the company Hall created to provide year-round performances of the Bard’s canon in his Stratford birthplace. Sadly, Theatre Royal Bath wasn’t able to mark last year’s big birthday – as it had done the previous seven summers – with a season of Hall-directed classic plays. TRB’s Main House was closed for a summer refurb: The Ustinov took on the mantle with a pair of jewels, Ford Madox Ford’s ‘The Good Soldier’ and Eugene Ionesco’s ‘The Chairs’.

Hall is back this summer, though, for an eighth summer season of hand-picked classics in Bath. Since the Theatre Royal’s first Peter Hall Company season in 2003, audiences have enjoyed some delicious menus of summer theatre: seven four-play seasons have included West End transfers for Alan Bennett’s ‘Enjoy’, Harold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal’, Noël Coward’s ‘Blithe Spirit’, Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ and a brace of Bernard Shaws, as well as a US tour of Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’.

And this year, the summer diary is full once again. Hall himself is directing Parts 1 and 2 of ‘Henry IV’, parts two and three of Shakespeare’s Plantagenet tetralogy that begins with ‘Richard II’ and ends with ‘Henry V’. Across its two parts, ‘Henry IV’ encompasses the entire panorama of 14th/15th-century English life, from the sleazy taverns of Eastcheap to the stately splendour of the royal court. But the two plays are quite different in both narrative and feel. Part 1 divides its time between the troubled reign of Henry IV (‘Richard II’’s Bolingbroke) and the dissolute activities of his son Prince Hal, who spends his time drinking and whoring around the City of London with a group of companions including that brilliant comic creation, the fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight Sir John Falstaff. Part 2, meanwhile, focuses on Prince Hal’s slightly halting progress towards the throne, and – one of Shakespeare’s most moving and uncomfortable moments, this – his ultimate rejection of his old drinking buddy as he assumes the robes and responsibilities of State.

When Venue speaks to him, Hall is knee-deep in rehearsals of both plays. “Part 1 has taken wing very quickly, but then it’s a very clear story,” muses Hall, who’s revisiting the pairing for the first time since they formed part of his landmark 60s ‘Wars of the Roses’ cycle at the RSC. “The second play, I think, is the masterpiece, but it’s more difficult to stage. The study of Prince Hal, as he tries to balance the two sides of his character and his destiny – kingship and loyalty to his old friend – it’s as if Shakespeare has Chekhov looking over his shoulder. It’s a very humane play, with quite a weak storyline, but the people in the story more than redeem it. And the humour is there, but it never overshadows the humanity.

“I think we do understand what Prince Hal has to do, but we also see ambition and realpolitik at work. People have very different views of Hal’s final behaviour: it depends on what day you look at it. It’s very subtle – and very alarming. His final rejection of Falstaff is a very sad moment. It’s easy to simplify it, and then it has no real validity. If you let it sing in each section, as it’s written, it’s an extraordinary piece.”

Alongside the two Henrys in this eighth Hall season, Stephen Unwin directs ‘This Happy Breed’, Noël Coward’s rarely-staged drama which follows the ups and downs of one ordinary South London family between the wars. Father Frank returns from World War I to the new family home; their children Vi, Queenie and Reg are variously happy and unhappy in love; the 1926 General Strike divides family loyalties, as does Edward VIII’s abdication. Completed in the months leading up to World War II and given a dress rehearsal the day before war broke out, the play finally got its first staging in 1942 with Coward himself as Frank.

“It’s a gripping story of working-class families between the wars – of men returning to civilian life to find the wives and children they left behind,” says Hall. “It’s also a wonderful evocation of a passage of time which brought the nation from post First World War optimism to a pre-Second World War sense of foreboding. It’s extraordinarily sensitive, giving a picture of what it was like to be alive at that time. And it’s very moving about family life, emotions and changes.”

This version’s directed by Stephen Unwin, artistic director of Kingston’s Rose Theatre and founder of English Touring Theatre. Unwin’s recent TRB successes have included two Peter Hall summer plays: 2008’s Bristol-set ‘Born in the Gardens’ starring Stephanie Cole, and David Storey’s absurdist nursing-home comedy ‘Home’ a year later.

Last in the season comes Alan Bennett’s ‘The Madness of George III’, directed by Christopher Luscombe, something of a Bennett wizard now after lauded stage versions of ‘Enjoy’, ‘The Lady in the Van’ and ‘The History Boys’. George III is best remembered today for his bouts of unbridled lunacy, in spite of a catalogue of accomplishments – he founded the Royal Academy of Arts, was the last British king to lead the troops into battle and fathered 15 children. Subjected to the appalling medical treatment of the day and battered by power struggles between politicians and his ambitious son and heir, he remains a fascinating and moving figure throughout Bennett’s play, which premiered at the National Theatre in 1991 before going on to vast theatrical – and then cinematic – success.

"It’s without doubt one of the most popular historical plays of the last 20 years and, with its prodigious cast, a true theatrical spectacle,” says Hall. "Our sympathies are very much with George, who’s being harried on all sides. It’s a very moving play.” “The productions all reflect aspects of England at war,” Hall reflects. “But they’re also all about performers, or performances, and trying to govern your life and behaviour by a certain honesty.”

So. Eighth season, eighty-first year. What keeps you coming back, Sir Peter? Discerning audiences? The joys of Bath in summertime? “It’s quite simple: to be able to do what I want.”

THE 2011 PETER HALL SEASON BEGAN WITH 'HENRY IV PARTS 1 & 2’ (JULY 7-AUG 13), CONTINUED WITH ‘THIS HAPPY BREED’ (JULY 19-AUG 13) AND ENDS WITH ‘THE MADNESS OF GEORGE III’ (AUG 17-SEPT 3). FFI: WWW.THEATREROYAL.ORG.UK FOR REVIEWS OF 'HENRY IV' CLICK HERE & HERE. FOR A REVIEW OF 'THIS HAPPY BREED', CLICK HERE.

Copyright Steve Wright 2011