HARRY Hotspur’s head was stuck on Micklegate Bar after the Battle of Shrewsbury, only a stone’s throw away from where Tom Cooper will stage Henry IV Part One and Two at St Martin-cum-Gregory Church from Thursday.

The history in Shakespeare’s history plays will come alive when staged in the city of York, a fact not lost on Tom, a University of York graduate, who is directing a York Shakespeare Project community play for the first time after his good deeds for Opera North and other companies over the past ten years.

“The fact that the stage is above graves and the cast will be walking on tombstones is in some way fitting for history plays,” he says, delighted at the first ever opportunity to use this 13th century, disused church as a theatre space.

“We’re making use of the church as we found it: the uneven pillars, the steps, the altar rail; the stained-glass windows; the sunken wood panels behind the altar, with the words of The Lord’s Prayer, The Ten Commandments and The Creed.”

In the past, Tom has directed two plays at a ruined monastery near Rapallo, Genoa, and a site-specific production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the formal gardens at Blenheim Palace, but staging history plays in a deconsecrated church is different again.

“It’s a hugely ambitious project,” he acknowledges. “We’re performing in a previously unused location with half the cast entirely new to the Yorkshire Shakespeare Project.

“We auditioned 60 people, and it was a case of picking the best from those I saw, choosing 22 and then using doubling to cover all the roles.”

The brace of plays presents a multitude of challenges for the actors. “What’s great about these plays is that the theatrical genres keep changing. They’re history plays but they also follow a tragic arc; there’s the tragedy of Falstaff and his eventual rejection by Hal, so you see his tragic flaw and slow downfall and it’s the same with the downfall of Henry,” says Tom.

In addition, comedy is writ large in the character of Falstaff, and the second play takes on a pastoral quality when it moves to Gloucestershire.

Consequently, to match this diversity, the look of Tom’s production is deliberately a mixture. “Shakespeare plays fast and loose with time as he tells a medieval story using Renaissance language, and audiences are going to filter it through 21st century ears and eyes, so you already have three periods at work,” he says.

“It strikes me that Shakespeare isn’t interested in historical authenticity; he makes things up to tell a good story, and because Shakespeare has done that, we’re at liberty to do that as well. We’ve given the battles a medieval feel as they’re written that way; we’ve given the palace scenes a kind of Edwardian feel; and the pub scenes feel like the Seventies or Eighties…maybe!

“The Gloucestershire scenes could be England before the First World War: bicycle clips and evensong and John Major’s cricket on the village green.”

Inevitably too, links can be made between past and present. “I’m really wary of the word ‘relevance’, but it’s interesting to compare scenes in the play with what’s happening now, like Hal exploiting his connections with Hal brings to mind Sarah Ferguson selling her royal connections to the News Of The World…or trying to!” says Tom.

Half way through the York Shakespeare Project’s 20-year plan to present all the Bard’s works, Henry IV Parts One and Two could be the most memorable productions yet.

York Shakespeare Project’s Henry IV Parts One and Two runs at the Church of St Martin-cum-Gregory, Micklegate, York, from Thursday to August 15.

Part One, July 29 to 31, August 12 and 14, 7.15pm; August 7, 8 and 15, 2.15pm. Part Two, August 5 to 8 and 13 to 15, 7.15pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatretoyal.co.uk