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.

This is the Globe’s first bash at a Greek tragedy, and Helen blossoms impressively in the open air. The set may look like something put together for a school play (tinselly shades of JATATD), but its multiple levels give the players scope to belt frantically about the stage without falling foul of the theatre’s sightlines. Frank McGuinness has produced a text that rambles cheekily between high tragic diction and colloquial bluntness, and Deborah Bruce’s company romp gleefully among its quirky, quicksilver twists and turnings.

Penny Downie’s Helen is a skittishly imperious ageing beauty, who’s been on her own too long to fret about the moral niceties of getting her man back, and getting home pronto. She’s matched by Paul McGann as Menelaus, an incorrigible chancer who’s managed to come through a disastrous war with his considerable charm still intact. And in a production that wears its irreverence on its sleeve, heavenly spokespersons Castor and Pollux (Fergal McElherron and James Lailey) appear like be-winged versions of Paul and Barry Chuckle, cheerfully elucidating semi-divine destinies while grappling with a range of uncooperative props.

This is Euripides without tears, a happy ending snatched from catastrophe, and the funniest Greek tragedy you’re likely to come across. It’s left to a self-mockingly lugubrious chorus, and Ian Redford’s thoughtful servant to hang onto a slender shred of gravitas amid the jollity. Not all wars are fought for the right reasons, they remind us, and good people suffer terribly for bad causes. But such lowering reflections take a back-seat in this irresistibly upbeat reading of a play that celebrates unlikely second chances, and reconciliation against all the odds.

Ché Walker’s writing aspires to present a polyphony of street-tongues and tales, often with different bits of dialogue happening in hairs-breadth counterpoint to one another. The resultant cacophony is invigorating in short bursts, but exasperating when it goes on, and during longer spells some of the audience resorted to talking among themselves. Matthew Dunster’s production, exuberantly choreographed by Georgina Lamb, exults in flooding the stage with waves of frenetic activity, but as the show progresses it’s the singular voices and presences of individuals that the audience comes to cherish.

Jo Martin exudes strident, lippy self-confidence as Violet, relentlessly circling Mo Sesay’s dogged, self-improving bouncer. Golda Rosheuvel plays convert Beth with longing in her eyes, and sings as if her life depended on it. And Danny Lee Wynter’s vociferous Benny is savvy and stroppy and fabulous. John Stahl and Kevorik Malikyan are the world-weary wise men who tie the threads of the show together, fatalistically regarding the follies and tragedies of youth, loaning a frayed-around-the-edges moral authority to the play’s unravelling drama.

Most of the audience enjoy themselves massively; laughing uproariously, whooping and whistling approval at the clap-traps, and energetically hissing the bad guy. They even seemed to like the slight and repetitive musical numbers that punctuate the action. However, the production’s indomitable, crowd-pleasing chirpiness sits uneasily with the show’s ambition to give a credible voice to London’s invisible inhabitants.

Walker’s script spends a lot of time satirising theatre’s fetishisation of a romanticised, ye olde London underworld, but The Frontline’s own tension between upbeat vibes and gritty realism never really gets resolved. So Robert Gwilym’s sadistic Cockburn, intended (I presume) as a figure of genuine menace, gets pelted by the audience with the kind of jocular derision usually reserved for King Rat. Old-fashioned reverence for the delights of the demimonde is simply replaced by a flashy, facile ghetto glamour that tends to skim over the very real dangers of streetstyle posturing.

Still, The Frontline makes a gutsy stab at being a contemporary social drama to match the vigour, daring and wit of Shakespearean precedent. Basically, it’s a feel-good fable about Londoners from all corners of the globe pulling together in the face of disaster, violence and intimidation. And a lot of Londoners were obviously responding to that message, and having a great time in the process, despite pelting rain. And you can’t really argue with that, can you?