Player Kings, adapted by Robert Icke from William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Icke directs Ian McKellen as Sir John Falstaff are Toheeb Jimoh (Ted Lasso & Romeo and Juliet) as Hal and Richard Coyle (Ink & Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore) as King Henry IV. Raphael Akuwudike (Prince John/Second Drawer), Sara Beharrell (Hotspur’s Servant/Snare/Davy), Samuel Edward-Cook (Hotspur/Pistol), Geoffrey Freshwater (Bardolph), James Garnon (Worcester/Silence), Alice Hayes (Messenger/Carrier), Henry Jenkinson (Harcourt), Nigel Lister (Northumberland/Francis) Annette McLaughlin (Warwick), Mark Monero (Peto), Hywel Morgan (Sir Walter Blunt), Joseph Mydell (Lord Chief Justice), Clare Perkins (Mistress Quickly), Daniel Rabin (Poins), David Semark (Vernon), David Shelley (Sheriff/Surrey), Robin Soans (Shallow), Tafline Steen (Tearsheet/Lady Percy) and Perry Williams (Page/Douglas/Thomas) complete the cast.
The production runs at the Noël Coward Theatre (where The Ocean at the End of the Lane has just closed), 1 April – 22 June 2024, with previews at New Wimbledon Theatre, 1 March – 9 March 2024, and Manchester Opera House, 14 – 23 March 2024.
A divided country, leadership crumbling, corruption in the air. Welcome to England.
Hal wasn’t born to be king. Only now, it seems, he will be. His father longs for him to leave behind his friends in the taverns of Eastcheap, most notably the infamous John Falstaff. War is on the horizon. But will Hal ever come good?
Bringing together Shakespeare’s two great history plays (Henry IV, parts 1 and 2), Player Kings will reign over London’s West End for twelve weeks only – playing at the Noël Coward Theatre from April 2024.
Ian McKellen plays John Falstaff. He first acted at school and with amateur groups in the north of England, where he was born and brought up. He studied English at Cambridge University and, since 1961, has worked non-stop in the British theatre. He has been leading man and produced plays, modern and classic, for the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre of Great Britain and in the West End of London.
He was in the first production of Martin Sherman’s sensational Bent and in premières of plays by Arnold Wesker, Peter Shaffer, Michael Frayn, Alan Ayckbourn, Mark Ravenhill and currently Ben Wetherill (Frank and Percy). Of late he has starred in Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land (with Patrick Stewart) and as Mother Goose in Jonathan Harvey’s pantomime. As Salieri in Amadeus he won every available award on Broadway.
In Shakespeare he has triumphed as Richard II, Macbeth (with Judi Dench), Coriolanus, Iago, Richard III (also on film) and most recently as King Lear (twice) and as an 80 year old Hamlet in Sean Mathias’ upcoming film. For over a decade, he toured his one-man show, Acting Shakespeare, at home and abroad.
McKellen is recognised worldwide as Magneto in the X-Men films and as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. He received his first Academy Award® nomination, for Best Actor, as the gay film director James Whale, in Bill Condon’s 1998 classic Gods and Monsters. Since he has starred in The Da Vinci Code, Mr Holmes, Beauty and the Beast, All is True, The Good Liar and The Critic.
