"...But a new star has vaulted into the RSC to avert the danger of jingoist ranting and offer to a multi-national audience a taste of youthful acting the like of which has not been seen since David Warner stunned a Sixties generation with his Hamlet.

"Kenneth Branagh, stocky, fair and unassuming, takes on this mammoth part at 23 with a guarded exuberance that carries him through this immensely long and demanding evening with all the assurance of a more experienced actor. Once convinced by his elders that what he has to do is inevitable, his Harry merges with the small band of ragged soldiers to inspire them, not so much through the vainglory of the lines but because there is nothing else to be done.

"Mr Branagh has thought out carefully his own reactions to Harry. The result, in Adrian Noble's restrained production, is an overall portrayal in which verse and action are welded, though his voice is not yet attuned to a large auditorium. But there are moments that will stay in the mind: the combination of extreme fatigue with the discovery that the English boys guarding the baggage at Agincout have been butchered by the retreating French, and the death of a loyal relative on the field that almost undoes him. Shaking with tears he clutches the tunic of the soldier next to him for comfort.

"...As for the French, they never have a chance in spite of being presented in golden array. Bob Crowley's stark stage, cleared this season of onstage seating, is cut across for the clown scenes by a white net curtain on a wire runner to give intimacy. And the audeince responds joyfully to a rain storm cascading from a great height before swilling away into the Avon. But it was Mr Branagh's night.

--Rosemary Say, Sunday Telegraph (March 1, 1984)

"...Kenneth Branagh's Henry, a performance that betokens a rich Shakespearian future for this young actor, also highlights Mr Noble's theme: the painful cost of war to the individual. He watches the on-stage execution of his old chum Bardolph with fought-back tears. He orders the killing of the prisoners with terse brutality. And, casting the gentleman code aside, he pummles the French herald with blows on a corpse-strewn field.

Rather than a hooray Henry, Mr Branagh is an angry Harry driven to personal violence by the degradation of a war he has been told is just.

What this humane and thoughtful production offers is a soldier's view of war; and their feelings about conflict are summed up in the ferocity of Malcolm Storry's truth-telling Williams, and in the memorable sound of the clang of swords hurled to the ground as the battle is finally won..."

--Michael Billington, The Guardian (March 3, 1984)

"The Stratford season has opened with Henry V, and Kenneth Branagh--playing the king with no fear at all that anyone will play the ace--looks the most compelling young actor to make a Stratford debut since Paul Scofield. Blond, stocky, boyishly well-graced, Branagh is an embryonic matinee idol if I ever saw one."

--Kenneth Hurren, The Mail on Sunday (April 1, 1984)

"...Kenneth Branagh, who sprang fully formed from RADA into Another Country is of slight build and natural authority. He speaks Shakespeare as well as anyone in recent years in Stratford and he does so without a trace of verbal or physical mannerism. He is undemonstrative, but powerful. His ambling progress across the opening scenes could be the result of acting or perhaps shyness. You soon know. He is listened to as a king but only sounds like one when presented with the French tennis balls. Then he explodes...

"The music of Howard Blake, the work of Bob Crowley, the superb lighting of Robert Bryan, the touching vivacity of a naturally French Catherine, all contribute to what is probably the best version of the play--on its own terms--that I have seen. The group work, the composed pictures on the stage, the gerneral air of confident investigation allied to expressive, exciting theatrical gesture, makes this a most auspicious opening for the RSC in 1984 Stratford-upon-Avon."

--Michael Coveney, Financial Times (March 29, 1984)

"...What links the vision of young Mr Kenneth Branagh, making his Royal Shakespeare debut as a raw, stocky warrior, with Coward's latterday musings is the patriotic poet which lurked beneath both their different facades.

"To hear Mr Branagh wonder incredulously at the valour of his ragtag-and-bobtail troops was to hear echoes of Derek Jacobi reading the moving war diaries of Coward at the unveiling of Coward at the unveiling of his memorial stone.

"...Suffice to say that neither the service at the Abbey nor Adrian Noble's spare, bare production at Stratford were mere tub-thumping exercises in mindless nationalism. There was pain, irony, with and humanity in both..."

--Jack Tinker, Daily Mail (March 29, 1984)

"Adrian Noble has taken a step away from the crowing victory of Henry V over the French at Agincourt and tilted unusually to the play's spiritual dimensions, to King Henry's adamant belife that victory was not his but God's. His Henry is a very young actor, Kenneth Branagh, at 23 some four years younger than the heroic king he portrays. Interestingly, the religion and the visible youth of the actor come together to make Mr Noble's reading something original: His is not a king of grandeur, but a king of faith, confident that God will serve the faithful...

"While Mr Branagh, too, shows sudden violent inclinations--hurling the French envoy into the bodies of boys murdered by the French army, for instance--it is clear that he is fighting for restraint and the divine authority of royalty. This confident performance won't make the actor's name, but it is a foundation. The whole evening is a fine start for another Stratford Season."

--Ned Chillet, Wall Street Journal (March 6, 1984)