SOURCE: Smallwood, Robert. Review of Henry VIII. Shakespeare Survey 51 (1998): 219-56.

In the following excerpted review, Smallwood comments on the excellently staged, designed, and performed Royal Shakespeare Company production of Henry VIII directed by Gregory Doran.

Gregory Doran's RSC production of Henry VIII at the Swan Theatre made splendid use of that exciting space. Robert Jones's simple and effective set had large double doors upstage, beneath a gallery where the musicians sat, with the words ‘All is True’ engraved across them in large roman capitals. The doors opened at intervals through the play (thus obscuring their ominous legend) for its great public shows to spill onto the stage: a version of the Field of the Cloth of Gold at the beginning, bass drum thudding, the entire company singing ‘Deo Gratias’, and a resplendent Henry trucked down stage astride a golden horse; the elaborate coronation procession for Anne Boleyn in...