Chimes At Midnight – Production Information 2023

Chimes At Midnight ~ The last of England

Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 reimagined by Orson Welles.

In 1966 the great Director of Film and Theatre made Chimes At Midnight. This epic film was the summation of his lifelong love of Shakespeare and especially his passion for Falstaff. The film conflated the History plays into one epic journey as the old England, represented by Sir John Falstaff is replaced the new. The end of an age.

To celebrate the publication of Shakespeare’s Folio, Folio 2023, Playbox Theatre bring the year long project to a close with this production inspired by the film Chimes At Midnight – the end of England.

A company of young actors will tell of the doomed friendship between Falstaff and the future King Henry V, Prince Hal in a panoramic sweep from the court to the inns of Southwark, from the orchards of Gloucestershire to the battlefield.

Chimes At Midnight is Shakespeare’s insightful, rip roaring, thrilling and tragic perception of the end of England and the birth of a new age.