Shakespeare’s Henry V and The Winter’s Tale will both be performed at the same venue this week by Propeller Theatre. The all-male company’s director Edward Hall talks about the productions.

Did you always want an all-male cast doing Shakespeare?

“I often get asked 'Why do you do all-male Shakespeare?’ It’s simply because that’s how they used to be produced. People have rightly pointed out that the experience for the audience of the actors would be completely different now to then but there are still some interesting moments created by the single gender casting. When Viola in Twelfth Night says 'I am not what I am’ and it’s a man playing a girl disguised as a boy, you are made suddenly aware of the sexual confusion that is at the heart of the play.”

How do you pick the two plays that you perform?

“The decision-making process for picking both plays is always different. I will usually pick the plays individually and then I will look at how they relate to each other and decide if that will work. I imagine somebody coming in to see the matinee and the evening – what will that experience be?

“Henry V is a very direct piece of writing, it was written in 1599 at the end of a decade when England was full of patriotism and xenophobia; the country was feeling very good about itself. We’d kicked the Spanish back home in 1588 in the Armada and people felt really good about being English. Shakespeare wrote this huge patriotic play about one of the great heroes of English history. The Winter’s Tale, which was written some years later, is very different. It’s written for an indoor theatre and therefore has a very different style. The language creates the psychology of the characters in a more delicate way and the play also uses special effects.”

Was there a sense of modern-day Englishness you wanted to appeal to in Henry V?

“I like Henry V because it’s about nationalism, about coming together as a community. It’s about coming together as a group of people in adversity and overcoming against enormous odds.

“What starts as a very passionate, very jingoistic story about a battle where we know the outcome, evolves into something much deeper. It’s intensely moving when you hear how many of the French are dead. Henry himself is cast as a man full of doubt, fear, conflict, who doesn’t know how to relate to God, but who is supposedly carrying out God’s will. I wonder how our contemporary leaders take the responsibility of blood on their hands?”

The opening scene of Henry V resonates with current events. Was this on your mind when you were directing it?

“The politics of Henry V are very interesting. Henry’s concerned at the beginning about whether he has a right to take France and he asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to advise him. Canterbury launches into a huge explanation about something called the Salic Law and blinds Henry with as much science as he possibly can, in order to get him to say “Yes, we will go to war”. In effect, they are arguing about the need for a war. Sound familiar?

The Winter’s Tale is not a play you often see performed. Is there a reason for that or for why you wanted to re-visit your production of it?

“At the moment, The Winter’s Tale is not one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays. I think it’s fashion rather than anything else. If you look back over the last 100 years, you can see that in the 19th century, the history plays were performed very rarely. Once we got to the First and Second World Wars, they became popular again. What fascinated me about The Winter’s Tale is that it deals with pure, unadulterated, unmotivated jealousy, that could strike anybody. It’s an exploration of what can happen to somebody when they fall foul of inexplicable jealousy and when that person happens to be in a very powerful position. The play then finishes with one of the most extraordinary endings in drama which leaves you with a lasting memory.”

Henry V and The Winter’s Tale will be performed at Canterbury’s Marlowe Theatre from Tuesday, March 27 to Saturday, March 31. Tickets £9 to £25.50, concessions £3 off. Box office 01227 787787.