The week on stage: From Kit Harington’s Henry V to the verbatim epic Our Generation

The highs and lows of the week’s theatre

‘Henry V’, ‘Our Generation’ and ‘work.txt’ (Johan Persson/Helen Murray/Soho Theatre)

This week’s crop of theatre includes an uncomfortably relevant production of Shakespeare’s historic war play, a verbatim production assembled from over 600 hours of interviews with 12 adolescents over the last five years, and a play where the audience become the performers.

Henry V – Donmar Warehouse ★★★★☆

Henry V is an intrinsically doubled-edged work. Is Shakespeare’s Plantagenet hero the supreme instance of patriotism as he trounces the French at Agincourt? Or is he a war criminal? Or is he a bit of both – wrapped up (courtesy of the Bard’s profligate genius) in the one deeply conflicted individual?