REVIEW

AT the Global Theatre in London on June 29, 1613, a stage cannon was fired during a performance of William Shakespeare’s play All Is True, which today we know as Henry VIII.

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Such a small and theatrical flourish would come to have devastating consequences, because the cannon set fire to the Globe’s thatched roof and within an hour one of the most famous playhouses, where most of Shakespeare’s plays had been unveiled, had burned to the ground.

The career of the country’s greatest playwright ended on the same night. He never wrote another significant play and died a couple of years later.

Those last two years are the focus of Kenneth Branagh’s All Is True. Heartbroken and bereft, Shakespeare returns to his home town of Stratford, and to the uneasy embrace of his wife Anne Hathaway and their two daughters, whom he has rarely visited over the previous two decades.

All Is True is heavyweight production, particularly in terms of those doing the acting. Branagh, who has done as much as anyone alive to bring Shakespeare’s plays to the silver screen, plays the great man himself.

Under a gleaming dome of a forehead, he is, though, barely recognisable. A knobbly prosthetic nose and a jutting bearded chin which, when added to a surprising lack of assertiveness, give him the air of a man who can’t decide whether he has entered a lookalike contest as Jimmy Hill.

Less compromised by the make-up department, Judi Dench plays Anne, and Ian McKellen has a highly enjoyable cameo as Shakespeare’s erstwhile patron, the Earl of Southampton. It is strongly hinted that the Earl was also the object of Shakespeare’s ardour. Or “Bardour”, if you prefer.

The script is by Ben Elton, who has tempered the jauntiness of his Shakespearean sitcom Upstart Crow to give us a barrage of sexual scandal and a whirl of emotions – grief, resentment, envy, lust – more suited to a modern soap opera like EastEnders. Or, maybe something else entirely different.

All Is True largely unfolds as an everyday tale of country folk, for which Dench unpacks her best rural vowels. Some might rather suggest it’s a ruff version of The Archers.

THE scandals concern both Shakespeare’s daughters. Susanna (Lydia Wilson) is unhappily married to a holier-than-thou Puritan doctor, to whom she is appearing unfaithful.

Judith (Kathryn Wilder) marries the more rakish Tom Quiney (Jack Colgrave Hirst), who has already impregnated another local woman, Margaret Wheeler (Eleanor de Rohan).

The grief is mostly Shakespeare’s, whose return to Stratford, without the distraction of writing and staging all those plays, re-ignites the pain of losing his only son, 11-year-old Hamnet, many years earlier.

“I’ve lived so long in imaginary worlds, I’ve lost sight of what is real,” he laments. At first, he gets precious little sympathy either from the stolidly undemonstrative Anne, or from miserable Judith, who was Hamnet’s twin, and feels certain that her father would prefer her to have perished instead.

Occasionally, Shakespeare loses his temper with these unappreciative womenfolk. “Through my genius I’ve brought fame and fortune to this house,” he bellows, and 400 years or so later there’s no real arguing with that, though Anne doesn’t look too convinced. But, gradually, the family learn to live with and even love each other again, despite Elton pulling out a rather startling late twist.

Branagh’s decision to cast Dench has raised eyebrows.

Anne was eight years older, whereas the actual gap between them is 26. Nevertheless, it’s a pleasure to see our greatest Shakespearean actress playing the Bard’s wife, and, All Is True contains many pleasures, not least the cinematography by Zac Nicholson.

Nicholson pounces like another 17th-century genius, Rembrandt, on the lighting opportunities afforded by all those candles, and all those sunbeams streaming through mullioned windows.

Outside, the panorama shots are ravishing. Warwickshire is a beautiful part of the country.

Verdict: An Intriguing tale.

★★★★