Theatre buffs will have had particular fun across Eyre's amply cast duo of films playing 'spot the National alum' amidst an ensemble that scarcely put a foot wrong, even if Adam Kotz's fleetingly glimpsed Hastings made one wonder where this fine actor has been since his own contribution to Hare's widely fГЄtedВ play about the Anglican church. Part TwoВ contains characters not found in the first play, among them the wryly comic yet poignant double-act of the justices Silence and Shallow David Bamber ( pictured left), aged up well beyond his years, broughty a flinty wit to the latter's ruminations on mortality ('death is certain to all all shall die') while reminding us of his own glory days during Eyre's National tenure in plays like David Hare's Racing Demon. Irons's melancholia helped fuel a play that, by contrast with its immediate predecessor, remains considerably more brooding and anxious, not least when set against the earlier high spirits and hijinks of Hal and co. The actor found a shimmering poetry in Henry's lengthy meditation on sleep (the passage that ends, famously, with 'uneasy lies the head that wears a crown') and cut a moving, hollow-eyed presence: the ruler's body seen giving way even as his capacity for remonstration would not. Irons didn't only register at moments of temper. But playing a Henry IV who won't surrender the throne until required by ill health and even then lets hurl with apoplectic rage, Irons ( pictured above) triumphed in one of those Bardic supporting assignments (Gloucester in King Lear is another) that can sometimes overtake the leads: David Bradley was a (deserved) 2006 Olivier Award nominee for the same role in a National Theatre staging that starred Michael Gambon as a particularly slovenly Falstaff. It's tempting to think of both halves of the Henry IV duo as defined by the shifting dynamics of Hal and Falstaff, the latter the comrade-in-fun who represents all the life-enhancing appetites unbeknownst to Hal's own father, who exists at a formal and severe remove from his son. Can someone not accommodate Irons once more on the classical stage, and soon? Playing the ailing King Henry who will not go gently into the good night, Jeremy Irons gave a performance of equal parts fury and passion that ranks with this actor's very best.

Henry iv part 1 bbc 2012