'English Kings Killing Foreigners' transfers to London's Soho Theatre for a five-week run this September

Tell-all dark comedy peeling back English cultural identity and the institution of Shakespeare comes to Soho Theatre this Autumn for a five-week run.

This playful and inventive piece of theatre skilfully combines a refreshing exploration of English culture with a frank and bold criticism of the institution of Shakespearean theatre in the UK - examining its ongoing role in the crafting of British national identity and its enduring power on the British stage. Philip Arditti (he/him) and Nina Bowers (she/they) write and star in this darkly funny and unflinching look at nationalism, intersecting identities … and Shakespeare’s Henry V.

English Kings Killing Foreigners is inspired by Nina and Phil’s real-life experience of starring in several productions of Henry V including at Shakespeare's Globe in 2019 where they first met. Both performers bring their extensive backgrounds in British theatre and of performing Shakespeare, to this ‘silly show about serious things’.

With arts funding under pressure, new writing faces increasing challenges in breaking through pushing many theatres to star-led Shakespeare productions for reliable box office draws. The work explores what it means to cast a Global Majority actor in a Shakespeare play, and how a non-white, non-English performer fits into this most English of hero-making stories. The show interrogates the politics of representation in what some now call a post-woke cultural landscape and considers the personal cost to the artists at its centre.

Shakespeare has increasingly become a focal point in wider debates around national identity, cultural heritage, and inclusion. From recent rows over “colour-conscious casting” to online backlash against modern adaptations, his work is regularly invoked in arguments about what constitutes tradition, and who gets to interpret it. For example, last summer, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers, who played Juliet alongside Tom Holland’s Romeo, experienced a barrage of online racial abuse that went on for months.

English Kings Killing Foreigners enters this conversation with playfulness, staging the tensions between reverence and critique, and asking who gets to lay claim to Shakespeare in 2025.

At its heart, this is a workplace comedy with a fresh perspective. In the play, we meet Nina and Philip; two actors cast in a highly anticipated production of Henry V. These two ‘outsiders’ bond over their scepticism of the Shakespearean institution and its role in the national identity and narrative of England.

But discord is just around the corner. Following the death of the “National treasure” star of their show – naturally, a White, English actor reviving his performance of Henry V for the fifth time – Nina and Philip find their relationship shifting. Nina is thrust into the title role, a move which inevitably impacts on the dynamic, causing increasing conflict and tension between the two.

As an audience to both the play, and the play-within-the-play, we watch Nina and Phil rehearse and perform sections of Henry V while being pushed to personal and professional extremes. Brutality bubbles under the surface before boiling over with results that will long reverberate, just as King Henry is taking to the battlefield at Agincourt.

The piece skilfully leads us through the micro-aggressions of the rehearsal room and the battlefields of France. It draws on Nina and Philip’s real-life personal histories with England, and their experiences as unwilling actors in a national (but potentially untrue) story about Englishness.

English Kings Killing Foreigners comes to London's Soho Theatre from September 16 - October 18. For tickets and more information, visit: https://sohotheatre.com/events/english-kings-killing-foreigners/