SOURCE: Morse, Ruth. “Review of Henry V.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5055 (18 February 2000): 19.

In the following review, Morse comments favorably on director Jean-Louis Benoit's stylized, comedic, and nonpolitical 2000 French-language staging of Henry V.

Although the imported films of Welles, Olivier and Branagh have been extremely popular in France, this Henry V is the first French theatrical production. Understandably, perhaps. It was briefly seen last summer at the Avignon festival, in the star position of the great outdoor courtyard, and televised live, to scathing reviews. Transferred now to one of the more intimate theatres at the former arsenal in Vincennes (whose surrounding woods, after the devastating storms at Christmas, are looking too much like a war-torn landscape), its virtues are wholly apparent.

Above all, by taking advantage of the play's calls to its own theatricality, the director, Jean-Louis Benoit, avoids the risk of offending French nationalist sensibilities. The costumes and...