I just got back from seeing the preview show of Third Wall Theatre's production of Henry V at the GCTC main stage (directed by Charles McFarland, playing till the 16th.)
It's not often that I can come away from a play with such a mixed review. There are some serious strengths in this production, and in Third Wall's newly formed Shakespeare ensemble - and there are some serious flaws. It all leads to me walking away having enjoyed the play thoroughly, even though there was a lot that bothered me about it. I'll try to explain.
Some things have been done with this show that just seem intrusively stagey. It's Henry V, after all - the temptation has got to be wellnigh unbearable to take one of the most affecting studies of leadership and war in the English language and push it into one modern or historical context or another. As a result, the Henry plays have been set in every imaginable wartime. But ... Afghanistan? Really?
Shakespeare has a wonderful conceit in the Chorus, that returns throughout the play: he tells the audience that of course you can't fit the story of a war onto a stage and into a few hours, and that it's the audience's job to fill in the "unworthy scaffold" with their imaginations. So, the set here is stripped down to where you can see the wings and the props pushed up against them, and in the middle is a large industrial scaffold (which can be wheeled around, separated into two pieces, and generally manipulated. So far so good, if not the most original staging ever. I'm willing to work with that, even if the scaffold was creaky and wobbly enough that it made the set changes really intrusive. Hey, the Chorus has already told us - this is the audience doing the work. That's cool.
But, then there's the inconsistencies. Along with more than a few grating accents (the French characters, as a whole, reminded me too often of the mocking Frenchman from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and David Holton, as Flewellen, manages to turn a Welsh accent into a vaguely North British or maybe Scottish, more than vaguely Pythonesque parody) there's the weirdness of them - if this is supposed to be Iraq or Afghanistan, as suggested by the modern desert-camo uniforms and guns, then why are the opposing armies speaking with French and English accents, and why, for that matter, are there opposing armies?
My companion speculated that setting it in Iraq was really just about questioning anyone's reasons for going to war - what are soldiers dying in Iraq for, and what were the English dying at Agincourt for - but if so it's an uneven comparison on all counts. We like Harry. Harry's clearly meant to be extremely cool. So, no comparison between leaders being made. There's no opposing nation in Afghanistan or Iraq. There were no insurgents or guerillas in France. And now I'm stuck trying to figure out what the comparisons and contrasts are supposed to be, and I'm missing the play, because I'm trying to figure out what's with the sudden interpolation of modern battlefield footage into Agincourt. Seems like you could talk about the human issues surrounding going to war without bringing in the images, context and political issues of a specific war that's far too close to us to be useful for metaphor.
It's true. Clever staging for the sake of being clever just winds up being confusing.
The staging could also have been far smoother - the sound in particular. The incidental music that came up between scenes was anything from rock to choral to instrumental, none of which seemed to tie in with the whole Iraq/Afghanistan thing, and in the battle scenes there were plenty of explosions, which would then cut off instantly so that the actors could yell their lines as though they were still yelling over the gunfire.
But, I have to say this for the new Shakespeare ensemble - they've got some very strong actors. As long as we were just watching the actors, and listening to Shakespeare's great writing, all those other issues became much less important. This cast has really worked on the language. They don't much rely on showy physicality on stage; there's much less dashing about the set than some productions would have. Bravely, they let the words do the work for the most part, and it works; you really start to hear how damn good Shakespeare was.
Some of them, to be sure, shout all their lines, switch poses between chunks of monologue, and insist on speaking all that rhetoric of Shakespeare's as though the character was searching for the metaphor and then coming up with it all of a sudden (you know what I mean, you've heard it... "So the Prince obscured his contemplation under the veil of wildness; which, no doubt, grew .... like [like, like what? Ah! I've got it!].... the summer grass, fastest by night, unseen....") And I'm not sure what was up with Steve Gilles Arnold as the Dauphin. I'm sure he was going for impulsive and hotheaded. But it looked to me like he was going for Jim Carey as The Mask; cartoonish and weird.
But some of them are really quite good. James Bradford, although he stumbled over his lines a lot, was surprisingly funny as the Archbishop. His long rambling geneaological proof of Henry's claim to France was well timed and well said, and he transformed almost completely to become the much older, wheelchair-bound King of France, and radiated defeat in the final meeting with Henry. Scott Wilson was solid as the Duke of Exeter as well - his one moment to really shine was an emotional report from the battle that was quite riveting.
The star, though, was Michael Mancini as Henry. I'd go see him in pretty much any Shakespeare production. Whatever the failings of the show, Mancini was totally watchable and compelling. I knew I was going to have fun watching him when he jumped down off the scaffold to answer the Dauphin's insulting tennis balls, with a low, controlled, quiet anger. "We are glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us. His present, and your pains, we thank you for..." he says, softly, pleasantly, and it's scary. And then his threat gets more and more expansive, until eventually he's literally got the emissary by the balls, and you believe that he would burn a country down over the insult.
Henry gets some barn-burner speeches, and Mancini's control of the emotional swells and ebbs was impressive. He also inhabited the part enough that you forgot he was acting. My favorite subtle moment was in the last negotiating scene, when France agrees to all the terms, and he turns around, being all kingly, and I saw a tiny look exchanged between him and Sarah Conn, playing the Duke of Clarence. A little, conspiratorial, 'we-got-em' look.
There were other moments as well - although the lighting was pretty straightforward through the play (strong spotlights featured heavily, as did a smoke machine that pumped the theatre full of inexplicable haze) there was a moment at the end of the battle of Agincourt when the soldiers carried a coffin off the set. The lights died until the only one was a bright light pointed out at the audience from the back of the set, which the soldiers walked toward, so that eventually everything was obscured but the flag on the surface of the coffin. A really nice piece of lighting.
Not sure about the choice to have CBC radio personalities as the chorus (tonight it was Rita Celli from Ontario Noon, and apparently they've also got Adrian Harewood from All In A Day to share the part with her) except that I guess they're supposed to look like newscasters, helped by the fact that they're well-known CBC people. But - lose the clipboard with the script on it, Rita. Memorize the lines. And if you must be miked, carry the mike and look like a newscaster.
So, that's it, a review as uneven, probably, as the play. There were some wonderful performances, and I'm eager to see what else this ensemble will come up with, because they've clearly been working hard on performing Shakespeare. The stage direction was wonky and clunky, but the language won through for me. I want to see what else they can do. As You Like It is coming up next season.
And I still think I'd probably go charging into battle behind Harry, given the chance.
He's just that kind of a king.
I rang it in last night at the Fireborn reading with the other Kymeras - we also got to plug