Christopher Gray admires the charismatic star’s authority on display

The Michael Grandage Company’s year-long residency at the Noël Coward Theatre has supplied much to savour but surely nothing to match the thrilling climax achieved in Henry V. Following contributions in past productions from Simon Russell Beale, Ben Whishaw, Judi Dench, Daniel Radcliffe and David Walliams, the final offering of the season features the immensely charismatic Jude Law on thrilling form.

The casting of a big-name, instantly recognisable star is ever a felicitous thing where this play is concerned.

It supplies a constant reminder to the audience (reinforcing what is stressed throughout by the Chorus) that we are not witnessing history but play-acting. We confront the inescapable fact that Harry himself is an actor playing the part of a king. This is a part, moreover, very recently acquired, he having abruptly changed course from a misspent youth in the company of Sir John Falstaff and his Cheapside roughs.

His famous rallying calls to his troops — “Once more unto the breach, dear friends”; “Cry ‘God for Harry, England and St George’” — are calculated utterances designed in part, one feels, to bolster his own resolve.

Law delivers them with a proper authority, though with something of the laddish air — a winning feature, this — of his screen persona. In more confidential moments we see this, too, and especially during his nighttime ramble in disguise among the British forces before Agincourt. His long disquisition on the subject of kingship is delivered with consummate skill, although here too one senses play-acting. “And what have kings that privates have not too?” Well, power, wealth, grovelling subjects, for a start.

As a lover Law shines in the delightful courtship scene at the close of the play when he woos Katharine (Jessie Buckley), the daughter of the vanquished French king. An extra layer of feel-good amusement is supplied here as Law — still eye-poppingly handsome at 40, if thinning on top — talks with an absurd self-deprecation of his unappealing appearance, “the poor and untempering effect of my visage”.

The alliance with the French is intended to set the seal on what has been from the start a calculated ‘land grab’, urged by the church in the cynical championing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, played by Michael Hadley, as beautifully spoken as ever.

Fine performances abound here in what — so dominant is the role of Hal — must always be regarded as comparatively minor roles. They include those of Matt Ryan as the comic Welshman Fluellen, Ron Cook as the puffed up pugilist Pistol, and Noma Dumezweni as his wife Mistress Quickly. Her speech following the death of (the unseen) Falstaff is at once comic and hugely touching, its tear-inducing effect enhanced by plangent music from composer Adam Cork.

Henry V
Noël Coward Theatre, London
Until February 15
Tickets: Call 0844 482 5141 or visit MichaelGrandageCompany.com