Henry IV Part 1, April, 1991, Royal Shakespeare Company:Director, Adrian Noble; designer, Bob Crowley;Photographer, Donald Coope

"Until Eastcheap unfolds, staging is simple, a matter of backing a throne with a vast cross or importing a few stark chairs. Then, suddenly, we are confronted with something beyond a mere red-light district. There are red sofas, tables and stairs and, cut into a vast red wall, a red upper room in which a whore is absently being serviced by a priest. As for the battle scenes, they begin excitingly, with both armies rising from the stages bowels in a huge pyramid of heaving chivalry." Benedict Nightingale, Times 17.4.91 Opening Date: 16 April 1991, Royal Shakespeare Theatre