The Hollow Crown: The Wars of The Roses Part 2 Reviewed

The Hollow Crown continues the story of The Wars of the Roses with the second half of Shakespeare’s three play extravaganza, Henry VI.

I was uncertain of the ability of this new The Hollow Crown trilogy to stand up to the level of the first one after Henry VI Part 1 (and half of Part 2) played last week. Partly this was due to the new series having to live up to Ben Whishaw’s remarkable portrayal of Richard II, which led off the first series.

"Henry VI: Would I were dead, if God’s good will were so; / For what is in this world but grief and woe?"

Tom Sturridge isn’t bad as Henry VI, but he’s not near as striking a performance, and that continued to be true this week as well. His performance certainly improved over last week, once he was stripped of finery and thrown into prison, but it was still a frustrating one. Ben Miles and Adrian Dunbar, the dueling Dukes of Somerset and York, who should be the leading voices in the angry chorus, last week spent the time as also-rans behind Hugh Bonneville’s Gloucester and Sophie Okonedo as Queen Margaret. With Bonneville’s Gloucester dead, one would think the two would step up this week. But instead they took back seats once again, this time to Okonedo and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Last week, Okonedo basically walked in, picked up the entire production and proceed to walk away with it. Bonneville was the only one putting up a fight at any point. This week, Cumberbatch, arriving late, didn’t seem to be aware the lead position had already been usurped. That is, until about 3/4s through the evening when he and Okonedo squared off. Once the fighting was finished and the Lancastrian forces lost, Okonedo’s Margaret is confronted by a Richard all too eager to kill her only child in front of her. The sudden discovery somewhere in the middle of that scene that the production was being stolen out from under him added a much needed fire to Cumberbatch’s otherwise casual malice as Richard, and turned up the production quite nicely, and made that perhaps the most memorable scene of the night.

Image via BBC

In fact, with Henry VI Part 2 (the second half of, plus Part 3), the entire production picked up speed. It helped enormously that Okonedo was put front and center for the crown, to the point of even having her wear armored mail. Her fierceness and ability to pull focus only made Sturridge’s random stumbling about in the field like a lost babe in the woods all the more flat. It also helped that other names willing to consider the production one that had to carry arrived, in the form of Kyle Soller (still secretly American!) as Clifford and Geoffrey Streatfeild as the man who becomes Edward IV. There was also a stint by Keeley Hawes (who seems to be everywhere at once currently) as Lady Grey, who goes on to marry Edward and become his Queen Elizabeth.

"Edward IV: “To tell thee plain, I aim to lie with thee.”Lady Grey: “To tell you plain, I had rather lie in prison.”"

Even France got an upgrade. I was highly impressed with Laura Frances-Morgan as Joan of Arc last week, but the rest of France mostly didn’t register at the time. It was just this thing that was happening over there that everyone had feelings about, without having much of a personality. This week, we got Andrew Scott, whom most will remember as Moriarty from the Sherlock miniseries, as an absolutely delightful King Louis XI. With a ruler like that, no wonder England’s forays into France were continuing failures.

Image via BBC

There were protests when this series ran in the UK last spring that it was chasing after Game of Thrones in terms of violence rendered on screen. Personally, I consider what they’ve done pretty restrained, considering. Being accused of following the lead of the show that the BBC let get away was probably inevitable considering the history between the channel and that production. (Yes, the BBC was originally supposed to be production partner to HBO for Game of Thrones, and chickened out.) The A Song of Ice and Fire books are also loosely based on the Wars of the Roses (Lannister : Lancaster, Stark : York), and attempting to put one on TV while the other is at a peak ratings moment was always going to force comparisons.

"Gloucester: “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”"

But Shakespeare should also shoulder the blame for the amount of violence. The reason that the Henry part of this cycle doesn’t find its way on stage that much is due to the sheer scale of the production that Shakespeare imagined attempting. Henry VI Part 3 has five major battles, four of which are supposed to be staged. That means that nearly every production basically treats the script as a problem to be solved, rather than to be performed as is. That goes for this one too, which for all our modern technology, still had a budget to stick to.

Image via BBC

When considered from that perspective, this is probably one of the most successful renditions of Shakespeare’s vision staged to date, even if the solution that came up with was cutting nearly everything in between the battles, so every time we turned around the horses were charging again. The battles raged, the blood ran thick and fast, and one got the sense of the terror of war that ravaged the countryside and sacrificed hundreds of soldier extras. And all over the egos of two little men who didn’t even have the force of personality to even be considered anything but a supporting actor in the drama unfolding.

Next: The Hollow Crown: The War of The Roses Part 1 Reviewed

Cumberbatch has big shoes to fill going into the final installment. Ian McKellen’s turn in the 1990s era WWII set film looms large. But unlike McKellen, who simply was dropped in front of us to intone “Now is the winter of our discontent” with little preamble and even less of a by-your-leave, Cumberbatch has been allowed an introduction and a world in which his seething, villainous rage against everyone involved in this horrendous war, including his own family, is placed in context. I would also be prepared for more blood.