First reviews of Matthew Macfadyen as Prince Hal in Henry IV Parts 1 & 2 at the National Theatre.
| | MATTHEW MacFADYEN |
Performance HistoryTRAINED:RADAAWARDS: Nominated for 1998 Ian Charleson Award (Best classical actor under 30) for Cheek By Jowl's Much Ado About Nothing and RSC's School for Scandal Nominated for 2000 Royal Television Society Best Actor Award for Warriors.CRITICAL QUOTABLES FILM and TELEVISION See IMDb IN HIS OWN WORDS |
 Professional debut as Antonio |
THEATRE | Year | Theatre Company | Name of Play | Character |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1995 | Cheek By Jowl | Duchess of Malfi | Antonio |
| 1998 | Cheek By Jowl | Much Ado About Nothing | Benedick |
| 1999 | Royal National Theatre | Battle Royal | Mr. Brougham |
| 2005 | Royal National Theatre | Henry IV, Pts 1&2 | Prince Hal |
| 1996 | Royal Shakespeare Company | Midsummer Night's Dream | Demetrius |
| 1998 | Royal Shakespeare Company | School for Scandal | Charles Surface |
CRITICAL QUOTABLES |  With Saskia Reeves in Cheek By Jowl's |
Kate Bassett, INDEPENDENT, May 8, 2005". . . Henry's own son, Matthew Macfadyen's Prince Hal, is damaging the royal family's image by boozing with Michael Gambon's terrifically dishevelled Falstaff. . .On the downside, the theme of youth versus age is somewhat undermined because Macfadyen and Harewood look a tad too old to be behaving like teenage-style rebels. However, getting longer in the tooth while their elders cling on may well be exacerbating their behaviour. . . Though Macfadyen can seem stolid, he also persuasively portrays Hal as a public-school brat going to seed, dimly aware he could turn into another Falstaff as he swigs his wine. His flashes of latent regal dignity never struck me as fully convincing, but he's an intriguing mix of arrogance and insecurity. The way he nods repeatedly during his first soliloquy about reforming also interestingly suggests a lost soul trying to rhetorically persuade himself - as well as us - that he can only get better. Hytner leaves a large moral question mark hanging over his final transformation into Henry V, who instantly declares another war. . .
Bradley's crescendo of parental rage is brilliantly developed as this frosty patriarch gradually reveals a wellspring of wounded tenderness. MacFadyen's surly silence is also hiding bruised filial love. Their deathbed reconciliation scene is particularly moving. . .
At the end, when Macfadyen's Hal finally shakes him off, Gambon seems to tragicomically deflate to the size of an abandoned baby, curling into helpless decrepitude as the new king's procession moves on."
Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, May 7, 2005". . . Matthew Macfadyen memorably captures the unlovable calculation of Prince Hal, but he is moving, too, in his pained encounters with his father. . . "
Alastair Macaulay, FINANCIAL TIMES, May 6, 2005". . . the thinking virile charm of Matthew Macfadyen's Prince Hal, both calculating and naive, would be ideal if only he let the words dance. . . "
Benedict Nightingale, TIMES, May 6, 2005"AFTER weeks of being bombarded by enervating arguments about our sceptred isle's future, it should have been a relief to see the two Shakespeare plays that deal most lucidly with that subject. And, yes, Michael Gambon, Matthew Macfadyen and David Bradley were better company than the party leaders on the telly. But I must admit that they didn't always light my mental and emotional fires.Which father or father figure will end up controlling that impressionable leader-in-waiting, Macfadyen's Hal? Bradley's king, who matches Stafford Cripps for austerity, or Gambon's Falstaff, who is more like Fungus the Bogeyman? Britain's national health, by which I don't just mean the state of our hospitals, depends on his choice. Indeed, the nation's soul is at stake. Nicholas Hytner's revival doesn't quite leave us feeling that.
For the two Henries to work, we must feel that Falstaff is a temptation, a lure, a danger. But from the moment he waddles painfully on stage, an askew belt on the grubby vest that precariously packages his vast belly, Gambon isn't even a refreshing change from Henry's wintry court. He lacks charm, fun and, surprisingly, charisma. All Hal is doing is slumming with a rheumy oldster who might be the ancestor of one of Gambon's recent successes, the cadging tramp in Pinter's Caretaker, or Humpty Dumpty years after he's fallen off his wall.
I'm all for desentimentalising someone who can become Santa Claus minus the reindeer, but Gambon goes too far, sacrifices too much. The odd moment of youthful reawakening - antique kung-fu kicks as he prepares for the robbery at Gadshill, a gormless twirl over the stage when he's asked to fight the rebels - fails to correct the overall impression. This Falstaff is morally so ill that he robs corpses on the battlefield and physically so sickly his decline in Part Two scarcely registers.
Gambon's slovenliness extends to his diction, which is often bleary and blurry. And that complaint must also be directed at Macfadyen, though his tendency is to scramble his words and jab at his syllables. As for his Hal, he's a cool young man who neither enjoys his japes very much nor seems to be using Eastcheap as a human lab that, as he says in a speech that should be twice as chilling, is meant to serve his own career. Indeed, he's pretty bored with the place well before a rejection scene that leaves Gambon's Falstaff doubled up with shock but Hal finds far too easy. . . ."
Paul Taylor, INDEPENDENT, May 6, 2005". . . But there is also human pathos. Matthew Macfadyen's witty, shrewd Prince of Wales is far more at ease than is usually the case with his game-plan of slumming it in order to win eventual credit for reform. That makes him emotionally less accessible to this Falstaff, who seems to spend the plays vainly reaching out to him for a gesture of affection that never quite comes. . . "
Michael Billington, GUARDIAN, May 5, 2005". . . in Hytner's hands they become a study of a son desperate to engage his father's love. And Matthew Macfadyen plays Hal very intelligently, as a brooding solitary who hangs out in taverns as a way of gaining his father's attention. And when the death-bed reconciliation between father and son finally comes it is deeply moving; although even here you notice how the expiring king passes on Machiavellian counsel about the need "to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels". I feel we've heard that somewhere before.But the very intensity of the father-son relationship means that Falstaff is slightly marginalised; and, if anything is clear from Hytner's production, it is that the love between Falstaff and Hal is all one way. Gambon's fat knight, in velvet toque and trousers, is clearly a Hal groupie who in the mock father-son scene in Eastcheap raises a genuinely imploring hand on "Banish not him thy Harry's company". And even after Hal has warned Falstaff of his eventual expulsion, Gambon follows him around the tavern with the watery eyes of a desperate spaniel. . . "
Peter Brown,, LONDON THEATRE GUIDE, May 4, 2005". . . Matthew Macfadyen (Prince of Wales) is fresh, confident and energetic as the Prince of Wales. . . ."
Paul Taylor, INDEPENDENT, 11 December 1999. . . Matthew Macfadyen is superb as Brougham, the brilliant defence lawyer for the princess and expert mobiliser of public opinion. . . .
Michael Billington, MAIL on SUNDAY, 11 December 1999. . . Gemma Jones as a stately Lady Jersey, Brendan Coyle as a shadowy spymaster and Matthew Macfadyen as the forensically skillful Brougham lend first-rate support. . . . .
Georgina Brown, MAIL on SUNDAY, 12 December 1999. . . Stafford's witty writing has the amusing flippancy, elegance and spite of a Giliray cartoon of the time - but, alas, neither the succinctness nor the moral force. I suspect that none of the royal household was as funny or clever as he and the outstanding performances of Brendan Coyle (the king's adviser) and Matthew MacFadyen (the queen's lawyer) imply. . . .
Charles Spencer, ELECTRONIC TELEGRAPH, 16 October 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen plays Charles as a hilariously slurry, silly ass, so drunk for most of the play that he has to keep assuming a horizontal position, yet somehow never leaving any doubt about his character's underlying decency. . . .
Nicholas de Jongh, EVENING STANDARD Hot Tickets, 15 October 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen's wild rake, Charles Surface at least beams a bright air of larkiness. . ..
Patrick Carnegy, SPECTATOR, 24 October 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen was irresistibly winsome as Charles . . . .
Georgina Brown, MAIL on SUNDAY, 1 November 1998. . . the acting throughout deserves full marks, in particular Matthew Macfadyen as a loveable libertine, so dizzy with drink that he plays his scenes horizontally on the floor . . .
Michael Coveney, DAILY MAIL, 16 October 1998. . . How we live up to how we are seen by others is concentrated in the lifestyles of the seeming paragon Joseph Surface and his dissolute brother Charles. these roles are played with colour and great relish by the comparatively unknown Jason O'Mara and Matthew McFadyen. . . .
John Peter, SUNDAY TIMES, 16 October 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen is a splendid Charles, an immature young blood with a heart . . .
Paul Taylor, INDEPENDENT, 16 October 1998. . . The strong company atmosphere is also the perfect way to predispose an audience to the extreme sociability of the good-natured libertine Charles Surface, here understood to be played by Sheridan. Not that Matthew Macfadyen needs any help. His performance is a masterpiece of comic charm. Even in the trickiest situations, his tipsy Charles always feels the need to lie flat on the floor, a position he assumes with an exquisite matter-of-factness as though it were the most natural thing in the world. . . .
Robert Hanks, FINANCIAL TIMES, 17 October 1998. . . the open-hearted, drunk Charles Surface (Matthew Macfadyen - two gold stars) dandling his aged uncle Oliver like a ventrilouist's dummy . . .
Jeremy Kingston, THE TIMES, 16 October 1998. . .The balconies not only give a spaciousness to the production but Charles Surface, the rakish but good brother, descends from one by rope for his long-delayed entrance. The genial voice of Matthew Macfadyen imparts a generous tone to the whole play thereafter . . .
Susannah Clapp, OBSERVER, 18 October 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen makes something original out of the lovable Charles Surface, tingeing his profligacy with loutishness. . .
Michael Billington, GUARDIAN, 15 October 1998. . . Donnellan also makes the rivalry between the Surface brothers much more complex than a straight contest between virtue and vice. Matthew Macfadyen, in particular, plays the "good" Charles Surface as a neurotic rakehell surrounded by offensive, somewhat anti-Semitic, yahoos and given to lying prostrate in moments of crisis: if he is instantly forgiven by his uncle for refusing to sell the old man's portrait you feel it is more whimsical vanity on the latter's part than a testament to Charles's decency.The production . . . rescues the play from cosmetic prettiness and treats it illuminatingly as a barbed comment on a divided Georgian society. .
John Gross, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, 14 June 1998. . . The evening's greatest strength is an excellent Benedick (Matthew Macfadyen). He negotiates his sentimental education beautifully. . .
Bill Hagerty, NEWS OF THE WORLD, 21 June 1998. . . Benedick . . . is played splendidly and most originally by Matthew Macfadyen . . .
Alastair Macaulay, FINANCIAL TIMES, 10 June 1998. . . Saskia Reeves and Matthew Macfadyen are Beatrice and Benedick. Their playing of the later scenes is beautifully multifaceted, funny and touching; their big scenes are played with delicacy and speed. . .
Benedict Nightingale, THE TIMES, 8 June 1998. . .Never have I felt more sexual unease in Shakespeare's Messina and seldom more emotional truth in a Much Ado. . . both Reeve's Beatrice, whose mannered facade conceals a surprising intensity, and Matthew Macfadyen's Benedick, behind whose goofy chortlings and ritual denunciations of marriage lurk a deep insecurity and nervousness of women.
This is not a new slant on the characters, but it is brilliantly executed. Macfayen is at his best when hinting at Benedick's jealousy of the extrovert Claudio or half-bursting into tears when the oddity of Beatrice's love for him hits him. . . .
Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 8 June 1998. . . The action is set in Edwardian England, a Merchant-Ivory world of long white dresses and afternoon tea on the sunlit lawn. There is also more than a hint of PG Wodehouse. The returning soldiers, constantly indulging in baying horseplay, might be members of the Drones Club, while Matthew Macfadyen's excellent Benedick comes over as a Woosterian silly ass, though he grows impressively in both authority and human feeling as the action develops.All this is both fun and persuasive, and the great eavesdropping scenes are hilariously played, especially by Macfadyen, who takes a spectacular tumble from a theatre box when he learns that beatrice loves him, then bursts into tears of gratitude. . . .
Brian Logan, OBSERVER, 14 June 1998. . . Beatrice and Benedick's sophistical struggle against love's gravity seems a noble rejection of hollow ritual. That the pair are wholly loveable helps too. Matthew Macfadyen's sympathetic Benedick is a Hooray Henry, discharging his wit with a bray that apologetically stops when he realises no one's joining in. He's never as urbane or admired as he fancies himself; when he suggests to Saskia Reeve's Beatrice that 'thou and I are too wise to woo peacably' that self-delusion reaches its comic apotheosis. When they're together - the one winsome but spiky, the other pratfalling behind a park bench - their big-heartedness fills the stage; when they consummate their romance with a much-postponed kiss, it lasts as long as it has been long-awaited. . . .Act Two emerges as a downbeat affair: I've never seen so clearly the extent to which, in a reversal of the axiom, Much Ado repeats as tragedy in its second half what it introduces as farce in its first. In a terrific scene before the interval, the lovestruck Benedick, apprehended by his friends, denies being smitten while hiding a bouuet of flowers behind his back. When next the three assemble, the scene finds its mirror image, only this time Benedick's burden is a less happy one: he bears a white glove; he's come to challenge Claudio. . .
David Benedict, INDEPENDENT, 11 June 1998Let me be quite clear: Cheek By Jowl's Much Ado About Nothing is wonderful. Not only is it constantly surprising and extraordinarily moving, it is full of wonder.Most productions manage some of the multiple plots at the expense of others. If you take Beatrice and Benedick to be the central relationship then the play tends to collapse when trying to tie together all the men's behavior towards women in times of war; Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod reveal the play to be as tightly laced as Hero's wedding corset.
Even Kenneth Branagh's Shakespeare-as-Heal's-catalogue film recognised that the action opens with the men returning from war; but after a flurry of hair-washing the women's reaction seemed restricted to an appreciation of well-filled uniforms. Here they act in relation to men whose behaviour is utterly dictated by military codes. Instead of the predictable cute-meet, Beatrice and Benedick's protracted pairing-off is the result of male public-school fear and disdain of women. When Benedick is fooled into loving Beatrice, Matthew Macfadyen's literal fall from upright behaviour is gloriously funny. . .
This is one of those rare occasions that make you understand shy people still present Shakespeare. It has nothing to do with making you "appreciate" his cultural greatness, you simply feel it as you drink in the play's living, breathing passion. . . .
Sam Marlowe, WHAT'S ON, 10 June 1998. . . As for Reeves and Macfadyen . . . well they make a far more interesting Beatrice/Benedick than Branagh and Emma Thompson did. Reeves gives us a spirited, intelligent Head Girl who is the life and soul of the party but who, in her drunkenness, reveals moments of deep melancholy and a longing for love. Macfadyen, meanwhile, is a daringly unappealing Benedick - priggish, bombastic and tactless - who nonetheless seems to have a core of decency that compels us to like him eventually, almost in spite of ourselves. . . .Macfadyen's Benedick, having overheard his relationship with Beatrice fraudulently exaggerated, virtually talks himself into love with her . . .
David Nathan, JEWISH CHRONICLE, 12 June 1998"Comparisons are odorous," says the word-mangling Dogberry in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, but as Cheek by Jowl's production of the play at the Playhouse follows hard on the RSC's, they are pretty inevitable.The Stratford and Barbican production showed fine actors struggling for truth amid a welter of director-inspired silliness; Cheek by Jowl's shows a confident company finding new ways with an old text . . .
Bachelor-soldier Benedick (Matthew Macfadyen) belongs to a male group bonded by social class and battle. He brays with the group in smug conformity until Beatrice's cousin, Hero (Sarita Choudhury), is falsely accused of whoring, at which point Beatrice (Saskia Reeves) finds the real man inside the macho posturing. . . .The quality of Declan Donnellan's directorial insight can be gauged by his use of one of Benedick's final lines, "Come, come, we are friends," not as a general goodwill platitude, but as a response to Beatrice unforgivingly refusing Claudio's outstretched hand. It unforgettably illustrates both her character and the changed relationship with Benedick. . . .
John Peter, SUNDAY TIMES, 14 June 1998. . . The production's great strength is in the acting. Matthew Macfadyen's Benedick is a bumptious, almost boorish young man from a minor public school: the suggestion that he had once played with Beatrice's feelings and then dropped her sounds all too plausible. The plot to make him fall in love with her is just another bit of male horseplay. The effect on Benedick is unexpected, though, and Macfadyen draws a warm but sharp portrait of a smug young blade moving through bewilderment and self-satisfaction to a kind of maturity. . .
Dominic Cavendish, SUNDAY TIMES, 10 June 1998. . . We watch in delight as Matthew Macfadyen's superb Benedick and Saskia Reeves's schoolma'mish Beatrice are tricked into love via hilarious eavesdropping scenes and arrive at weepy-eyed affection.. . .
Robert Butler, INDEPENDENT on SUNDAY, 14 June 1998. . . The period works well for Beatrice's rival: Matthew Macfadyen's lugubrious, upright Benedict has a drawling laugh, raised eyebrows and military bearing. His amused certainty comes from rank rather than intellect. It would madden any woman. . . .
Georgina Brown, MAIL on SUNDAY, 21 June 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen's Benedick, an upper-class twit with a charming, lazy drawl, is not an obvious match for Saskia Reeves's sparky Beatrice, whose excessive appetite for life can leave her with a blinding hangover. But his brave choice to stand apart from the chaps and defend the innocent Hero proves that he, too, is his own man and much more than a well-stuffed shirt.this production finds Benedick's song 'Sigh no more . . .Men were deceivers ever' moved to the opening, which over emphasises the play's potentially tragic subplot. . .
Carole Woddis, SUNDAY TIMES, 10 June 1998. . . Matthew Macfadyen's beautifully conveyed Hooray Henry Benedict . . .
Nicholas de Jongh, EVENING STANDARD, 6 June 1998Top of Page. . . Matthew Macfadyen's moustachioed Benedick with drawling voice and braying laughter . . .