A LEADER talks of taking over a country without impacting on its people. His soldiers are tired. His equipment is cumbersome, malfunctioning, not at home on foreign soil. Sounds familiar?

Such is the resonance of Shakespeare's Henry V, topical anew in these lengthening, desert days of the military conflict in Iraq.

Henry V may be the play of the gung-ho Sun reader, with King Harry's rallying calls the stuff of bristling defiance beyond England rugby dressing rooms, and yet here was grist to the Independent reader's mill too. Shakespeare for all seasons, for all reasons.

This is not to burden Barrie Rutter's visceral production with the weight of an on-going conflict. His focus is on the rise of Henry to heroic status on the battlefield of Agincourt, pondering upon the price of kingship in "a story of the coming of age of a man, a king and the nature of power". In other words, a study of leadership and gifts of inspiration under pressure, in the theatre of war, where it is said man discovers most about himself.

All this guts and gore and growing pains is, however, counterbalanced by combative, sportive comedy on Giuseppe Belli and Emma Barrington-Binns's circular, wooden bull ring of a set design.

Rutter's production truly enjoys the craic, be it Tim Barker's Pistol and his loose-cannon mouth; the cocksure French soldiers ribbing each other over horses and whores; Andy Hockley's fiery Welshman Fluellan and his leeks; or the young French princess Katherine (Maeve Larkin) learning parts of the anatomy in English and then being wooed across the language barrier by the victorious yet unsophisticated Harry.

All this is enhanced by not only the crunching northern accents but also Hockley's richly Welsh tones and the assorted French accents, both real and cod.

All the while, director Rutter twinkles in the painterly, scene-setting role of the Chorus, his university lecturer's attire of an informal suit being the one modern dress code amid the 15th century clothes of war and court.

Conrad Nelson, who also provides the production's stirring a cappella compositions and beating percussion patterns, is highly physical in the central role of Henry V: strong on the rallying blasts, the big heart in combat and the comic thrust and parry, but less so in moments of personal contemplation. A Henry without the fifth gear.

Henry V is running in tandem with Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness on tour.

Box office: 01723 370541

Updated: 10:11 Tuesday, April 01, 2003