Falstaff's Belly: Pathos, Prosthetics and Performance

Summary

BODY PARTS I & II

In March 2008, a number of London newspapers carried press advertisements for the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of the Henry IV plays, which ended its run at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon towards the end of the month, and transferred to the Roundhouse at the beginning of April. Touted as the centre-piece of a marathon cycle of eight history plays, the two parts of Henry IV encapsulate the appeal of an event that drew heavily upon a sense of the RSC's own institutional history, its traditions and its mythologies, which, in the advance publicity, are figured in the persona of the productions’ Falstaff, David Warner (Illustration 8). Garlanded with quotes from four-star reviews (‘Warner's return to the RSC after more than forty years away proves a triumph,’ declared the Evening Standard; ‘The RSC is making a triumphant return to its roots,’ announced the Sunday Times), the advertisement remembers the glory days of the early years of the RSC under Peter Hall, with Warner's resurrection in Stratford and London after a gap of four decades summoning memories not only of his own Richard II and Henry VI of 1963–4, but also his gauche, iconic Hamlet of 1965. The narrative is that of a prodigy returned, of a movie actor long exiled from his home in the theatre finally rediscovering his stage vocation. Warner’s twice-iterated ‘return’ is that of the RSC also, which has learned to recall the story of its own youth with him; caught in a carefree pose that seems to catch him toasting his own ‘triumph’, Warner’s Falstaff can barely contain his glee over his and his company’s success. The compositional centre of this publicity image is Falstaff ’s belly, here an expanse of red-framed white space that invites us to project upon it a theatrical and institutional history.