Edward Hall's exhilarating battle-dress production of Henry V turns the Royal Shakespeare Theatre into a combat zone and clearly benefits from the RSC's researches with the Army Training Regiment. Traditionally the play has been seen as either a jingoistic celebration or a cynical study in statecraft. In both cases, it is treated as a star vehicle.
The first shock of this production is to find that we are in for a company show as much about the nature of Englishness and the ethos of war as about the qualities of kingship. The lines of the Chorus are divided up democratically and William Houston's Henry emerges as a dogged fighter who has to earn his claims to leadership.
If a key point comes across, it is that the English possess a truculent chauvinism that only turns into heroism in moments of crisis. When the Dauphin's emissary arrives with the tennis balls he is greeted with a jeering rendition of the Marseillaise. The low-life figures are boozy bigots who chant a celebratory song about "Enger-land" specially composed by Billy Bragg. Even when they get to France, we are reminded that cowardice coexists with valour and that there is a tendency to mock the other elements in their multinational force: Adrian Schiller's Fluellen, for instance, seems sublimely unaware he is being sent up as a typically earnest Taff.
The production confronts Shakespeare's ambivalence towards heroism. Houston's Henry, conned by clerics about the legitimacy of his claim to France, turns into a tough fighter and, during the siege of Harfleur, inspires his troops to scale the dress circle. Henry's ruthlessness, however, is not shirked: his notorious order in response to French brutality - "Then every soldier kill his prisoners" - is followed by volleys of gunfire.
It's a tribute to Houston that he manages to win us over in the peacetime scenes. The wooing of Catherine Walker's French princess is excellently done: he has to exercise all his charm to captivate a woman rightly resentful at being treated as a diplomatic trophy.
But this is symptomatic of the way Hall has intelligently rethought the play while giving us a bravura spectacle. Michael Pavelka's design is dominated by a mobile mine-wheel that at one point advances downstage to become a terrifying battle engine. And, while Matt McKenzie's soundscore is overwhelming, there is ironic wit in the music.
I'd also single out Michael Thomas's precise Exeter and Arthur Cox's Bardolph, whose hanged figure reminds us of Henry's refusal to be swayed by old loyalties. That typifies a superb evening that poses endless questions about national identity and the ugly demands of heroism.
•Until October 7. Box office: 01789 403403.
