Eschewing the emotional chiaroscuro of more contemplative, claustrophobic visions, this Henry IV 1 is a rollicking paean to the mythology of wild prince Hal. In the Boar’s Head tavern (presided over by a tart Barbara Marten and the beatifically placid William Gaunt), Jamie Parker’s sunny prince disports himself, displaying a most un-regal knack for tumbling, penny-whistle playing and flirting with (delighted) groundlings. Not a whit the Machiavellian dissembler, this is a Hal who morphs from loveable madcap to charismatic martial hero with unselfconscious ease, leaving others to marvel at the suddenness and subtlety of the transformation.

Altogether less blithe is Roger Allam’s Falstaff; a shrewd old soldier, disreputable but far from daft, whose determinedly economic engagement with life’s actualités is a charade accomplished enough to fool everyone but himself. It’s he, and not his easygoing protégé, who broods, bleary-eyed on an uncertain future. But, a showman to his fingertips, he buries this more-sombre-self under a welter of affectionate buffoonery, and the imperturbable facade of habitual vice.

This is a production more concerned with the fate of mates than that of nations. By contrast with the laid-back fellowship of East Cheap, the highly-strung, wasp-stung Hotspur of Sam Crane is a self-regarding liability, callowly fumbling each chance to make his peace with Lorna Stuart’s alert, politic and queenly Kate.

The company’s repertoire of ballads and drinking songs veers tipsily between booze-fuelled jollity and morning-after melancholy, and their air of easy camaraderie suits the show’s unpretentious, blokeish charm. Part 2 is due at the start of July (so watch this space for further news …), but even without its climactic sequel this is a roguishly appealing, stand-alone historical romp.

Angela Davies cunningly sub-divides the stage (using nothing more sophisticated than some lengths of carpet) so that private spaces nestle precariously within the public arena of professional politicking. In the resulting Chinese-box of a court, the passionate rhetoric of a collapsing marriage spills from room to room in the manner of many a domestic row. And Rosenblatt exploits these spatial arrangements to choreograph cinematically-precise sequences of simultaneous action, uniting victor and victim within a single, exacting, narrative of historical necessity.

Round every corner lurks Ian McNeice’s Wolsey, a benevolent scarlet Vice of unbounded stomach, whose inordinate ability to run up expenses turns out to be his undoing. Dominic Rowan makes a powerful and charismatic Henry, torn between his (only marginally self-regarding) sense of kingly rectitude and Miranda Raison’s pensive Ann Bullen. But the real reasons to see this show are the gripping performances of Kate Duchêne and Amanda Lawrence.

Duchêne maps Queen Katherine’s collapse from flirtatious self-confidence to inarticulate panic with assurance, capturing her unequal struggle to mask both fury and terror behind a pious facade of compliant wifeliness. Watching her agonised disintegration, it’s suddenly obvious what Sarah Siddons saw in the role. Lawrence meanwhile, balances this solemnity with a peevish (and sometimes frankly lewd) stream of alarmingly pertinent wittering, casting a jaundiced eye over the bartering of bodies and hearts.

As history demands, Henry gets his way, and his wife of choice (at least for the moment). The sumptuous finale is a riot of gold, with a tiny infant Elizabeth, amid a joyous clamour of choir-boys, provoking prophecies of glory for the realm. It’s a triumph of Jacobethan myth-making. And, what’s more, it’s an absolute triumph for the Globe.

Dunster treats Troilus and Cressida as it is, perhaps relying too much on the Bard. With noblemen in togas, warriors in thongs and hard leather armour, and the stage plastered up to resemble a Greek Pantheon , there’s nothing fresh about this production.

Directorially, the show fails to solve the problems of a staged ‘problem play’ on multiple levels, causing characteristic incoherence and disintegration of the plot. The love between Troilus and Cressida, not being given much dramatic weight, starts off no better than a churlish affair. Paul Stocker’s bland Troilus bombards Laura Pyper’s free-spirited, determined Cressida with soap-opera-like praise and love that does not show genuine intensity until they are separated by the mandate of the state. Troilus receives the news with a loud, cringe worthy shriek.

In the Greek camp, there is a ’subtler’ and more sinister mixture of discomfort, fear, threats of sexual harassment and assault when all the men slowly greet Cressida with predatory, forceful kisses. This, to say the least, gives her a valid reason for being fickle, for seeking security from Jay Taylor’s attractive, staunch Diomede. Here the audience is given adequate cause to sympathise with Cressida’s situation but not with her separation from Troilus.

Somewhat ironically, Dunster’s Troilus and Cressida, intended for the Globe’s Young Hearts season, hardly focuses on love at all. The ongoing wars are realistically portrayed as the Trojan warriors return drenched in blood, stumbling with exhaustion. It’s made clear that this tragedy of a nation is caused by the lascivious encounter between Ben Bishop’s repellent Paris and Ania Sowinski’s seductive, polygamous Helen. The Trojans have little choice but to keep fighting to maintain what is left. Heroism seems to be a myth as noble Hector is overthrown by the dark magic of Achilles (Trystan Gravelle), who is spotted with a strong Welsh accent, an awful lot of eyeliner and a black, lightly camp, valet Patroclus. This is an uncompromising depiction of a world plagued by lust and dog-eat-dog warfare, a provocative vision that, if more poignantly executed, could have been a success.

In this case, taking into account the tackiness of the young lovers and the anti-tragic realism of war, Dunster’s production is fractured. Crucial off-stage actions are left to be wondered at, which results in the production being jumbled and not unfolding smoothly enough for the mighty ending. There are some glimmers of directorial genius—Dunster triumphs when tackling the play’s sombre moments—and a few redeeming features, such as Matthew Kelly’s pantomimic, lust-struck Pandarus and the high-octane battle scenes, but that, alone, is not enough to save the show.

Szkotak’s starting point, it seems, is the power struggle within a decaying kingdom. Political instability breeds fear as Duncan gnaws on his throne and shoots all the messengers who bring bad news, only to be relieved by the sight of a naked traitor in a cage. There is no report of Macbeth’s prowess. It soon becomes clear that the supernatural is the ultimate agent of change. The witches in the guise of nuns and with extended wooden legs glide into the performance space lighting the torches and preparing a welcoming ritual for Macbeth and Banquo. The witches’ prophesies are not only re-enacted as grotesque fantasies; they hover between the real and the un-real. For instance, there’s a scene in which kings line up and tower over Banquo, followed by a boy rolling a king’s crown on the ground. The images merge when the boy later appears as Banquo’s son.

Recurrent images, such as the bullet crown, the boy, the guns, the logs, and the extended wooden legs, become symbolic of Macbeth’s mental state of captivity. The themes of fatalism, entrapment, claustrophobic violence and psychological trauma, are very well played out especially toward the end. Seeking prophesies from the witches, Macbeth is cornered and crushed by a gigantic steel wheel filled with severed heads. Soon after, encroached and overpowered by ‘Birnam Wood’, Macbeth is startled back into the blazing castle where he is burnt to ashes on his throne.

Szkotak’s tactics, made possible by the intimate ambiance of Square2, the National Theatre’s temporary outdoor venue on the Southbank, are to shock and petrify his audience by graphic violence accentuated by sound and manipulation of light. Be it Banquo being hammered to death by burning torches or Lady Macbeth hanging herself, the excruciating horror is within the audience’s reach, as if one could jump in and put an end to it. With Shakespeare’s text replaced by non-verbal, raw and gory action, the adaptation stops one from sympathising with the hero. Szkotak’s Macbeth is no longer a tragedy but a story of an ambitious murderer who is met with a deserving end.

Conceptually for The Winter’s Tale, what else could be more representative of this transatlantic project than Mendes relocating Sicilia and Bohemia to England and the US in the 18th century? In the hands of the Oscar-winning director, the re-imagined locations manage to stave off tackiness. King Leontes’s English-Sicilian court is crippled by jealousy, uncontrollable rage and claustrophobic tragedy. There, time freezes in mourning. America/Bohemia is, by contrast, the land of joy, simplicity and immense opportunities that come in the form of a lost female baby with a head of gold. Cowboys and farm girls dance their day away in the great outdoors.

Without a doubt, it is Simon Russell Beale that delivers the star performance. Beale personates Leontes with a mighty interpretation that has long been lacking in the character. He not only brilliantly embodies the fits and the rage that jealousy entails but is almost apologetic of his own vice. From the start, there is a sense of incompatibility—a short, stout, and aged king versus a tall, slender, young, and beautiful queen—whilst Hermione’s bond with Leontes appears social rather than sexual. Rebecca Hall’s free-spirited and passionate Hermione seems to be better off with Josh Hamilton’s gay Polixenes rather than with Beale’s introverted Leontes. Alienated by his young queen whose head rests on Polixenes’s firm and youthful chest and whose hands gently caress the Bohemian king, Leontes is vulnerable—doomed by his own sense of insecurity and inferiority. The dimmed blue light while Beale delivers his soliloquy well confirms this moment of self-ostracism, of fear that he could lose all. Beale explains jealousy as reactionary—a protective father who strives to keep his family together.

Ironically, Hall’s queen is not entirely faultless, but she proves her innocence with a dramatic tearful breakdown. As for Leontes, by refusing to listen to his courtiers—by the likes of Sinead Cusack’s motherly Paulina and Dakin Matthews’ dutiful Antigonus—and Apollo’s oracle—the latter comes in form of a quill that writes by itself—he lets his ego get the best of him. Et voila! The tragedy is done.

Love—or the thought of losing it—is the driving force of the production. Sadly, there remains the unevenness in interpretation in the way-too-merry second half. Leading the troops is Ethan Hawke's abrasively funny shape-shifting Autolycus. The only criticism would be that if Mendes could not take Leontes for granted, he could definitely have done more to stop his American rodeos from becoming mere representatives of the ‘American dream’.

Apparently, the play’s usual flaw is Bertram, the male romantic lead. When the King of France forcibly weds him to Helena, in return for her curing him of a fistula, Bertram’s reaction is one of extreme distaste. He proceeds to abhor his wife for the rest of the play, joining the army to avoid her and promising to consummate his vows only if she fulfils certain nigh-impossible conditions. Then, when she duly fulfils those conditions, he turns on a sixpence in the interests of a happy ending.

Here, Bertram (George Rainsford) is a snooty child of privilege whose rejection of Helena is a reactionary response to their class difference, and his sudden turnaround is the logical result of his confidant Parolles’ exposure as a coward and fraudster, which shows Bertram that his judgement of character isn’t as sound as he thinks it is. It’s then perfectly natural for him, upon his reunion with the wife he thought dead of heartbreak, to be grateful for a second chance with a woman whose praises are sung by every other character, but whom he foolishly dismissed without a second look.

More importantly, Bertram’s change of heart is a victory for Helena, who takes the traditionally male role of dogged suitor and stubbornly refuses to take “no” for an answer. Michelle Terry, who deftly handled multiple roles in season opener England People Very Nice, here deftly embodies Helena’s strongest aspects – her determination and her good-humoured mischievous streak. Perhaps fittingly, her performance is weakest when showing Helena’s weakness; the monologues mourning her unrequited love are drastically overplayed.

The only ‘problem’ aspect remaining is what Terry’s independent Helena sees in Rainsford’s spoiled Bertram in the first place.

None of which is to say that this is a flawless production. The stylised silent vignettes Elliott uses to cover scene changes seem pasted in, at odds with the dark gravity of Rae Smith’s imposing, tumbledown set; and Helena’s ‘resurrection’ is greeted with saccharine streams of golden light and a rain of sparkly rose petals. All that’s missing is a choir of angels.

Perhaps under other circumstances having ’solved’ All’s Well would be enough of an achievement, but this is the National we’re talking about; it’s perfectly justifiable to demand more.

This week finds the company at Whitechapel Art Gallery. Parts are distributed as a result of a game of paper, scissors, stone, and then we’re off on a promenade through and around various bits of the building. As with any set-up in which so much is left to chance and imaginative intuition, the quality of work varies wildly, and not all of the spaces we visit are particularly suited to the company’s ebullient inventiveness. Act II, with actors and audience bounded in a steamy nutshell of a gallery, is a bit of a performative non-starter. But Act IV down a dark alley works a treat, with furtive alliances being brokered in the shadows, and urgent messages furiously signalled from upstairs windows.

The addition of props plundered from the audience also leads to some wonderful, ridiculous and revealing bits of improvisation. Horatio grabs a Superman action figure to stand in for old Hamlet as he describes his martial victories. Claudius and Laertes play a murderous round of Mornington Crescent as they struggle to locate the fugitive Hamlet in a London A-Z. Gertrude announces Ophelia’s death by pouring a stream of water from a first-floor window, before suspiciously snapping the details of her son’s final dual with a borrowed disposable camera.

There are lines I’m never going to hear in the same way again. “Is it a custom?” asks a dubious Horatio, poised to unbuckle after watching a naked Dane belt gleefully across the ramparts. There’s also the best graveyard scene I’ve ever been privileged to witness, in which a toy koala and a flipper help clarify the subtle distinction between deliberate and accidental drowning, before a gravedigger’s decision to start getting his kit off has astonishing and inspired dramatic consequences.

The company even find a fitting finale for the evening, with a stage-full of corpses picking up and humming the plaintive strains of Hamlet’s antic ukulele. It’s all a bit like one of those unpredictably brilliant rehearsals that are infinitely more exciting than the finished product. It’s a production without concept, in which the actors feverishly juggling words, words, words keep revealing brilliant new facets of a familiar text, then tossing them away with spendthrift unconcern. It’s uneven and unrepeatable and incredibly good fun, and it’s all happening again next Sunday. Somewhere.