Kirkville

Update: the two Henry IV plays are now available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as part of the Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon series. (Amazon.com, Amazon UK)

Following the brilliant Henry IV, Part 1 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, I saw Part 2 a few nights ago. I’ve always preferred Part 1 as a play, and in this production, it’s clear which part stands out.

Henry IV Part 1 is a big play, with big themes and scenes. There is the boisterous tavern scene, the thrilling battle, and the intrigue in between. Part 2 came off as a small play, with a lot of small scenes, and little connection between them.

In Part 1, we see the relationship between prince Hal and Falstaff, and we especially see the foreshadowing of what will happen once Hal becomes king Henry V. In the riotous scene at the tavern in Eastcheap, where Falstaff and Hal take turns pretending to be Henry IV, Hal’s father, the prince shows, in just a few words, that he will eventually turn his back on Falstaff. This is the key moment of Part 2, at the very end of the play, showing that this story is much less about the title character – Henry IV – than it is about Faltsaff and the future Henry V.

There’s a lot to get through, however, before reaching that point, and this RSC production is excellent in some ways, but mediocre in others. There are a number of set-pieces, in the tavern at Eastcheap, with Falstaff and others, and with Justice Shallow, an old friend of Falstaff’s, who the latter visits to find some soldiers. There is much comedy in this play, but it’s not as successful as in Part 1 At times, I was wondering if someone else had written parts of it, as the language is as coarse as Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl, which I saw recently. Sure, this is Shakespeare, but for some reason, it just doesn’t gel that way Part 1 does.

There are some powerful scenes, though. One is where Hal comes to the bedside of his dying father, and, thinking him dead, takes his crown and leaves the room. When Henry IV awakens, he finds the crown missing, and the subsequent scene, with Henry IV lamenting his son’s seemingly swift self-crowning, and Hal explaining his gesture to the king, is very moving.

The minor characters show great talent, in spite of the less brilliant story than in Part 1. In both parts, Paola Dionisotti is excellent as Mistress Quickly, though I had trouble understanding her accent at times; Joshua Richards is wonderful as Bardolf, in spite of his limited role in the play; and Oliver Ford Davies was luminous as Justice Shallow, a character I’ve always felt to be thin and uninteresting.

In the end, the play comes down to those few lines where Hal, now Henry V, renounces his past life of carousing, and with it, his friendship with Falstaff:

FALSTAFF.
My king! my Jove! I speak to thee, my heart!

KING.
I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers;
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dream’d of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old, and so profane;
But, being awaked, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body hence, and more thy grace;
Leave gormandizing; know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-born jest:
Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company.
When thou dost hear I am as I have been,
Approach me, and thou shalt be as thou wast,
The tutor and the feeder of my riots:
Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death,
As I have done the rest of my misleaders,
Not to come near our person by ten mile.
For competence of life I will allow you,
That lack of means enforce you not to evils:
And, as we hear you do reform yourselves,
We will, according to your strengths and qualities,
Give you advancement. Be it your charge, my lord,
To see perform’d the tenour of our word.
Set on.

Falstaff is unshaken, thinking that Henry is just pretending to criticize him, and says, “I shall be sent for soon at night.”

This is not to be, and Falstaff is adrift.

The entire play comes together at this moment, but I didn’t feel that this production gave this scene very much emotion. Something about the scene made it seem inconsequential. It had no gravitas; there were only a few characters on stage – Falstaff and his friends, and Henry and a small retinue – and it seemed small compared to its importance.

This production had an interesting beginning. The part of Rumour, who speaks a prologue, is played by Antony Byrne, who also plays Pistol. He begins by making an announcement asking people to turn off their cellphones and digital watches. Then says, “Turn off your phones. And open your ears.” He then comes on stage in jeans and a Rolling Stones t-shirt, and starts speaking the prologue, but is stopped briefly by a ring on his iPhone. He replies to a text, then takes a selfie, and speaks the rest of the prologue, while hashtags, such as #openyourears, are projected on the stage and the scrim. This was a delightfully modern way to open the play, and it worked very well.

On the other hand, the epilogue was cut. It’s not important to the story, but it does set out what would happen in the follow-up, Henry V. The play ended here with Falstaff’s young page coming out into the middle of the stage, then the lights cutting out. I felt that ending made no sense.

All in all, it was an agreeable night, but, as expected, much less so than Part 1. If you can see both, you should; if not, see Part 1, which is a memorable production and features a brilliant Falstaff.

Update: the two Henry IV plays are now available on DVD and Blu-Ray, as part of the Live from Stratford-Upon-Avon series. (Amazon.com, Amazon UK)

It’s been a while since I saw a Shakespeare play; the last one was Richard II at the RSC, with David Tennant. I was somewhat disappointed in that production: Shakespeare’s history plays aren’t always the most interesting, and the cast, to me, seemed overshadowed by Tennant.

Last night, however, another history play blew me away. Henry IV Part 1, the first of two Henry IV plays, has recently started running at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon, with Antony Sher as Falstaff.

The Henry IV plays are odd. They are the only history plays that contain so much comedy, and the most important character in them is not the named character. In fact, King Henry IV is almost a minor character in part 1. He has the fourth longest part in the play, with 341 lines, after Falstaff (616 lines), Henry Percy, or Hotspur (562 lines), and Henry Prince of Wales, or Hal (551 lines).

Falstaff is clearly at the center of this play, not only in the tavern in Eastcheap, where he is in his element, but also on the battlefield, where he shows his true colors. And he’s the star element in this play: he’s the actor who gets chosen as a draw, and he gets on the poster. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Amazon.com, Amazon UK), Harold Bloom focuses almost entirely on Falstaff. “The two parts of Henry IV do not belong to Hal, but to Falstaff, and even Hotspur, in the first part, is dimmed by Falstaff’s splendor.”

The RSC’s current production, directed by Gregory Doran, shines a light on Falstaff, and highlights the humor of the play, but does not neglect the rivalry between Prince Hal and Hotspur. This rivalry, both between the two and in the mind of Henry IV, is set out in a statement that the king says to the Earl of Westmoreland in the first scene:

O that it could be proved
That some night-tripping fairy had exchanged
In cradle-clothes our children where they lay,
And call’d mine Percy, his Plantagenet!
Then would I have his Harry, and he mine.

Prince Hal is under the influence of Falstaff, and the first time Hal appears onstage – waking up with two young women – Falstaff comes out from under the covers at the foot of the bed. They drink and carouse together, much to the chagrin of the king.

The tie between them is strong, and clear, though one never learns how they met, and why they became so close. Falstaff can be seen as a surrogate father to Prince Harry, and his warmth and affection are apparent. Falstaff is a bumbling, old, fat drunk, but he’s the drunk you want to have by your side. His loyalty is obvious, and he’s a riot to be with. Sher gives Falstaff a voice and character that shines brilliantly from the stage. The set pieces with Falstaff brought the house down: the long scene where he recounts the bungled robbery of some pilgrims, then pretends to be the king, is a delight. The comic timing of the cast is wonderful, and I, like most of the audience, was in stitches.

Contrasted to Falstaff, Alex Hassell’s Prince Hal is stately and upright, yet perfectly conveys the insouciance of youth; at least until later in the play, where he has to take up arms against Harry Percy. He then shows that he has what it takes to become king.

Trevor White, as Harry Percy, or Hotspur, is a seething cauldron of anger and hatred. White walks a fine line; he’s just shy of overdoing his portrayal of this character. But his attitude felt realistic, even his gesticulations of pleasure at being able to fight King Henry’s men. He is loud and boisterous, but his overzealousness works well.

While the scenes with Falstaff are full of laughs, the rest of the play does not lack energy. There are some slow scenes – particularly the first scene with King Henry and Westmoreland, and some of the later scenes that discuss the disputes between the king and Mortimer, Hotspur’s uncle. But the action picks up in the climax, which occurs at Shrewsbury, where a vast battle will decide the fate of the kingdom.

The battle scene is breathtaking: the actors are running back and forth, swinging swords and clashing shields. Sitting right next to the stage, I had to lean back, to keep my distance, as all that metal was flying so close to me. Amidst all this, of course, is Falstaff, who first plays dead, then pretends that it was he who killed Hotspur, not Prince Hal. There is one moment in this scene where Antony Sher shows Falstaff in a nutshell: the rotund man, lying on the ground, has great difficulty getting up, rocking back and forth like a turtle on its shell, much to the delight of the audience.

The staging was inventive, with quick changes from an empty stage to the tavern in Eastcheap, and with a powerful use of lights and music. The pacing of the play was rapid and full of movement, with the exception of a couple of scenes where characters were static.

This production of Henry IV Part 1 is riveting, hilarious, spectacular and a true delight. It’s one of the best I’ve seen at the RSC, and the rousing applause after the performance reflected three wonderful hours of theater. I want to see it again.

Don’t miss this production. It’s playing in Stratford-upon-Avon through September, then in London, and a number of other cities in the UK. It’s also going to be broadcast in cinemas on May 14.

Photos: RSC, Kwame Lestrade.