Celebrated theatre director Marion Potts is making a grand return to Bell Shakespeare, Australia’s leading company for productions of The Bard’s great works, in a riveting new production of Henry 5.
Following a fifteen-year absence – Marion was the company’s Associate Artistic Director from 2004 to 2010 – she returns to direct a tale of political ambition, leadership under pressure, and hard-won victory on the battlefields of France.
All gripping stuff, and Marion couldn’t be more pleased to be back on home turf. “It has been a total pleasure to return to the company,” she says, underlining the sensation as wholly familiar and yet completely different at the same time.
Henry 5
- 11 – 25 May 2025
- Fairfax Studio, Arts Centre Melbourne
- Get tickets here
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“The culture of the company has always been a supportive and positive one – and it still is. But there are many new faces! The play is what drew me back,” she admits, “the opportunity to crack open questions that are particularly relevant to our time: war, the ethics of leadership, and how we hold ourselves accountable as complicit participants.”
The timeliness of a production such as this speaks to the infinitely transferable nature of Shakespeare’s works, in which the plays can essentially be transposed to any time period or global setting. Famous examples include Richard Loncraine’s 1995 retelling of Richard III in the 1930s, under the impending shadow of fascism. Even 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You is a modern remix of The Taming of the Shrew.
Marion is delighted by Shakespeare’s evergreen relevance in mainstream culture and society. “What’s endlessly inspiring about Shakespeare’s writing is its richness and its ability to resonate across different times and places,” she says.
Speaking to Henry 5, Marion says, “It’s the geopolitical reality that we are experiencing as a global community that feels alive.
“Particularly questions to do with different perspectives on history and how we choose to tell the story of violence, often spinning it to suit the agenda or message we want to communicate.”
What continues to engage audiences with plays written over 400 years ago is the invitation they offer to grapple with the complexities of a changing world, and to think about how they can be navigated with more understanding and compassion.
Marion’s return to Bell Shakespeare is one which prompts some treasured memories, returning to a role in which she helmed some of Australian theatre’s most applauded productions of Othello and Hamlet.
Looking back, she says, “one of my all-time favourite productions was Venus and Adonis, a collaboration between Bell Shakespeare and Malthouse Theatre Melbourne. It took the epic poem by Shakespeare and transformed it into a piece of music theatre. It ended up being a reflection on the female condition, exquisitely composed by Andree Greenwell and designed by Anna Tregloan, who also designed this production of Henry 5.”
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This new production also heralds the breakthrough of Sydney-born actor JK Kazzi, a young performer heretofore best known for his role on Aussie soap Home and Away. The sun-drenched coast of Summer Bay is something of a jump from Elizabethan England, in more ways than one, but it was clear to Marion that he had the necessary range to convincingly play the titular Henry V.
“One of the things that struck me in the audition,” she recalls, “was how collaborative and open to ideas he was. That has very much been the case in rehearsals. JK had graduated from NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) only a year prior, but was clearly a highly talented and well-trained theatre performer. He had great instincts and vocal range, a truthfulness and emotional facility, as well as physical dexterity: all things that you require to bring off a big role in theatre.”
To those who dismiss Shakespeare as old and boring, too hard to understand, Marion does recognise that it’s no easy task to stage a great work from The Bard. The text itself, however, has infinite possibilities and can always be made to feel contemporary.
“He was a real man of the theatre,” Marion says, “and his writing was always intended to be performed. The fact that he is so widely studied means that he is often read and the texts don’t come alive in the same way. I would say, persevere!”
As good an invitation as any, director Marion Potts’ new production of Henry 5 is set to be a theatre experience scarcely forgotten, and not to be missed.
Bell Shakespeare’s new production of Henry 5 will be performing in Melbourne from 11-25 May 2025. Buy your tickets here.
This article was made in partnership with Bell Shakespeare.
