Player Kings review: Ian McKellen is hilarious in immensely cool show

Player Kings review and star rating: ★★★★

What a treat! How about watching what is essentially a four-hour comedy skit with Ian McKellen larking about in a fat suit? If that sounds too long, you’re wrong: it’s actually not long enough. And the best thing about Player Kings is you needn’t be a Shakespeare stan to extract oodles of joy from this incredibly cool production.

McKellen plays Falstaff, one of The Bard’s great aging characters. He’s hilarious, mainly because he’s grotesque; an undignified liar and a drunk, he’s also intelligent, and a leader within a warring faction under the seat of King Henry IV. He’s a companion (and bad influence) on Prince Hal, son of the King and future Henry V. The play documents the tumultuous reign of Henry IV as a group of rebellious nobelmen plot to overthrow him.

Player Kings is surely one of the slickest Shakespeare adaptations the West End has seen. Robert Icke’s production (he also adapted the plays), despite being close to four hours, goes in a flash, feeling constantly pacey and surprising. There’s a good mixture of the delivery of traditional verse against intensely creative, punk-laced visions of the lawless taverns of Eastcheap, where Falstaff beats up policeman and refuses to pay his bar bill. The recklessness is juxtaposed with scenes of the King pacing about anxiously as he loses his grip.

Somehow 40 minutes passes in one scene alone within a pub; you simply can’t take your eyes off of magnetic McKellen, leering around the stage. It’s not that he doesn’t seem 84 years old, more it’s just incredibly impressive that he is 84-years-old, putting in immense effort at points to kneel on the floor and haul himself back up again during choreographed fight scenes (yep, choreographed fight scenes). Another part of you feels he could do it all in his sleep. When he comments on the politics, he stands centre stage alone, bearing shadows of Lear (of course, McKellen has played him fabulously), his gait creating a vacuum in the space. It’s no understatement to call him the great Shakespearean actor of our generation and you would be remiss not to see him in everything he does. You never know when it will be his last. (Unbelievably, he’s off on tour around the regions with Player Kings following the 12-week London run, much like he was with Mother Goose last Christmas. People half McKellen’s age should harass him for tips about where to find energy.)

It all looks staggering cool. Hildegard Bechtler’s set design is lushly contemporary and purposefully timeless, sometimes throwing us in the 1980s with pulsating club beats, Levis and bomber jackets; at other times perhaps there are motifs from The Great War. It’s always texturally arresting, whether through the great stage-height curtains that characters slide across to reveal new set pieces, or the spectacular racket of guitar music and radical lighting during a brawl. There’s an experimental look and feel but never at the expense of atmosphere; there often is only Falstaff’s armchair on an otherwise black set with some pub regulars and some policemen, but it feels gritty all the same.

Elsewhere the cast shimmers: Richard Coyle’s Henry IV is richly sketched, both in earnestness and sadness, wearing his anxiety as heavily as his uniform, and Toheeb Jimoh, a relatively new face, brings exciting dynamism and energy to the youthful Prince Hal.

Player Kings can absolutely take itself seriously, but mostly it’s a literal piss up in a brewery, with Ian McKellen. What more could you want? He’s got an actual east London boozer where he allegedly runs quiz nights in his spare time (yep, really), so perhaps Player Kings is him mixing work with pleasure. To be fair, you get the sense he’s been doing that all along.

Player Kings runs at the Noel Coward Theatre until 22 June and then goes on tour around the UK