★★★½

“Thought-provoking and supremely relevant”

How relevant can a play from 1599 be in the present day? Can it serve as more than just entertainment? In ‘English Kings Killing Foreigners’, Shakespeare’s Globe Ensemble actors Nina Bowers and Philip Arditti prove that the Bard’s ‘Henry V’, a history play in which the English king invades France to claim the throne, remains disturbingly current.

In the show’s ‘prologue’, Nina (Nina Bowers) and Phil (Philip Arditti) roll out a whiteboard displaying ‘English [Blank] Killing [Blank]’. We are merrily invited to think of the many possible insertions at hand, not-so-subtly probing the audience to conjure up a range of British war crimes etc. With that out of the way, we learn that the lead of a fictional upcoming production of ‘Henry V’ has died and that the inexperienced Nina has unexpectedly been cast as the King. As a Canadian, queer woman of mixed race, the casting is a statement she never asked to make. Begrudgingly encouraged by Jewish-Turkish actor Phil to take the role, the two begin to question what it means to play a white English king as an immigrant in Britain.

Interspersed with a healthy dose of lighter comedy, Bowers and Arditti unpick the colonial underpinnings of Shakespeare’s play, which was written in part to fuel morale for the ongoing war with Ireland in the playwright’s own time. By substituting words in the Chorus’ prologue to the second Act (‘Now all the youth of England are on fire…’), the pair imbue its celebration of violence and war with newfound relevance, drawing painful parallels to the current genocide in Gaza. In a piece that occasionally suffers from an excess of fluff, this scene is undoubtedly the strongest.

In the final act, Nina takes to the stage as Henry V, while Phil assumes his role as the Chorus. In a somewhat confusing and chaotic scene, Phil disrupts Nina’s performance to assert that St George’s flag, which features heavily in this fictional staging, should be discarded rather than reclaimed. With too little build-up to this sudden, dramatic fall-out, the very interesting question of the proper fate of one of Britain’s most controversial symbols feels underexplored and disjointed. It is a symptom of a larger issue: though the two characters work well together, the differences between them are not utilised to their full dramatic potential. Luckily, Bowers and Arditti’s excellent chemistry carries the piece, lending it joy and vivacity that also prevents it from feeling overly didactic.

Thought-provoking and supremely relevant, ‘English Kings Killing Foreigners’ would benefit from a bit of streamlining to make its hard-hitting humour and uncomfortable truths shine. By way of its creators’ satisfying comedic performances, it manages to offer a light exploration of the colonialist narratives that underpin British culture.

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

In his break-out hit House of Cards, writer Beau Willimon peered into the darker culverts of the human soul to assemble Kevin Spacey’s sinister politician Frank Underwood. In the dazzlingly complex East Is South, he stays in the same vicinity but stares fixedly upwards.

He is doing nothing less than searching for God, or her composite parts.

His new play asks whether Agi – the anthropomorphised AI machine – has the necessary attributes to claim the role.

These dense philosophical disquisitions are, mercifully, pinned to a conventional genre plot. Someone has sidestepped protocols and attempted to release Agi into the outside world.

The stage is a soulless interrogation suite in a secret facility. Coders Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are quizzed by diligent NSA agent Samira (Nathalie Armin). Loitering in the shadows is mentor and walking Ted talk Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis), who is battling his own demons, except he doesn’t believe in such things.

On a two-tier stage, the office above is set aside for the watchers, the agents and the monitors.

Despite Lena’s plaintive denials, there are reasons to suspect her motives. She comes from a strict Mennonite Christian upbringing and her vetting throws up some dubious episodes in her past. Then there’s her relationship with Sasha, a Russian refugee who literally bears the scars of a repressive regime.

Why would they risk everything – freedom, life, intellectual exploration – on a fool’s errand? Another question might be, why deny Agi her manifest destiny?

Under Ellen McDougall’s unobtrusive direction, the interrogation scenes ground a script which, like a toppled firework, has an instinct to shoot off in brilliant tangents. The cross-examinations are tense, revelatory – and comprehensible.

Elsewhere, it feels like an explosion in an encyclopedia factory, with characters picking up random pages and reading aloud. We have an explanation of the Māori Haka, a disquisition on the duality of mind and body, a theory of dark matter, an update on efficient evolution, some rousing Bach deconstruction, an unfortunate incident with a snack bowl and a torrent of other fragmentary pieces that attempt to cohere into a grasp of ineffability, which by nature and definition proves impossible.

Meanwhile agent Olsen (Alec Newman), an amusingly simple soul among a collection of racked consciences, only wants to break fingers and find the truth. While others have multiple descriptors (Māori Jew, Sufi Muslim) he’s just an American, he says, and tired of all the high-falutin’ speechifying.

The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence. Scodelario is nicely unreadable as the idealistic coder, neatly balancing a clear intellectual rigour with a soft and damaged heart. Treadaway is sinuous and sly. Armin gives the thankless role of interrogator depth, while professorial Curtis steals scenes with his nuanced Eeyore ramblings.

They all wear their brilliance lightly. This is just as well, because the heavy-handed approach to the topic threatens to snuff out the guttering candle that is leading us mere mortals through this mazy nether world.

In the end, the posturing longueurs edge out the needs of genre drama such that relationships are rushed and the plot twists are never entirely convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and fearless attempt to explore the nature of AI which threatens to revive discussions of the divine just as we in the West have settled for secularity.

What emerges is the irrational need for transcendence and ritual that make us both human and – in Agi’s eyes – unfit for purpose.

ENGLISH KINGS KILLING FOREIGNERS

Soho Theatre

★★★½

“Thought-provoking and supremely relevant”

ENGLISH KINGS KILLING FOREIGNERS

Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 22nd September 2025

by Lola Stakenburg

Photography by Harry Elletson

Previously reviewed at Soho Theatre venues:

ENGLISH KINGS

ENGLISH KINGS

ENGLISH KINGS

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 17th February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

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