DruidShakespeare: Theater review by David Cote
The earliest sight in Druid Theatre Company’s radical condensation of Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V is a man digging a grave. He’s upstage left behind metal scaffolding on Francis O’Connor’s bilevel set, grimly and mutely shoveling from a pit. The image neatly prefaces what we’re about to see: a historical pageant with a high body count, but also an act of theatrical archeology, in which adapter Mark O’Rowe (a marvelous playwright on his own) and the formidable director Garry Hynes plow up tons of dirt and roots from this tetralogy, sometimes called the Henriad. Given that the creative team has to hack away several hours’ worth of material to create a single marathon event of approximately seven hours (with three breaks), DruidShakespeare: The History Plays is a violent affair, drenched in the blood of all those killed darlings and severed textual limbs. In the end, hard-edged clarity is achieved, at the expense of some beauty, humor and subtlety.
The four plays span English monarchic history (from 1398 to 1415), from the deposition of vain, impetuous Richard II to the victory of Henry V over the French at Agincourt. As far as we know, Shakespeare composed them sequentially (from 1595 to 1599, it is speculated), and so they seem to have a unified thematic arc and superstructure. Richard II is written entirely in verse, and it depicts the downfall and death of a man who confuses his temporal powers with divine infallibility. Before his murder, imprisoned Richard seems to finally acknowledge his limitations, his humanity. You could say the play is about a king brought down into the muck. The two parts of Henry IV, conversely, are about a prince who starts in the muck (consorting with sots and thieves such as Sir John Falstaff) but ascends to glory, as one of England’s most heroic leaders: Henry V. These plays mingle verse and prose, just as Prince Hal associates with seedier social types. Henry V resolves the tetralogy’s themes of successional guilt, loyalty, betrayal, father-son antagonism and the theatricality of stagecraft as best as it can—which is to say, messily. For all of its soaring battle rhetoric and English jingoism, Henry V is an unstable and uncontainable war play. Its four acts of war and bloodshed end with a comical wooing scene between Henry and Princess Katherine of France.
This context is merely to indicate that O’Rowe sacrifices a lot to create Druid’s version. Among the cuts: Prince Hal’s spine-chilling “I know you all” soliloquy; humanizing banter between Harry Percy and Lady Percy; Falstaff’s cynical dissection of honor; and Princess Katherine, absent entirely. The scene where Mistress Quickly, Bardolph, Pistol and the Boy recall the death of Falstaff has been moved to the very end, forming a bitter, rueful epilogue.
The cuts and reshaping of the material, broadly speaking, create a lean, mean epic that is heavy on deeply flawed, self-tortured, Machiavellian monarchs and light on grace notes of humanity and compassion. To be sure, the Henriad is not state propaganda. Richard II speaks gorgeous verse, but he’s also a terrible ruler. Henry IV spends most of his reign trying to wash Richard’s metaphorical blood from his hands. And Hal is most complex and contradictory of all, a shallow, manipulative, narcissistic yet strangely impersonal presence. (This may be my hang-up, but I’ve always felt that Hal is Shakespeare’s most difficult male role. It’s not the length of role or intensity of emotion, but the actor who plays Hal must make him irresistibly charming and scarily detached, sympathetic but also unreachable. There’s so much unsaid in his role that the right actor could evoke.) DruidShakespeare inevitably flattens the richer and dimensional aspects of the characters in favor of a fast-moving, plot-packed spectacle.
This being an Irish company, there is an implicit critique of British imperial power in the selection of cuts. After all, Richard II’s fall from power begins after he returns from fighting the rebellious Irish, and Henry V’s landgrab in France is justified by the slimmest of ancient laws. The royals of these stories come across as much less noble (and less hypocritical) than servants, soldiers, whores and crooks.
Director Hynes goes with gender-blind casting, meaning that women play Henry IV, Prince Hal, Northumberland, Silence and others, while a fully bearded man flounces about as Mistress Quickly. Marty Rea has the meatiest role as the tragic and self-dramatizing Richard II. Bald-headed and covered in white makeup, Rea navigates the rich poetry and psychodrama with alacrity and anguish. Aisling O’Sullivan’s Prince Hal/Henry V is fiercely unsentimental, both boyish and thuggish, a bold and perhaps overly blunt choice. Aaron Monaghan’s Pistol is a swaggering maniac, providing much-needed slapstick. Rory Nolan bellows and struts amusingly as a classic Sir John Falstaff. And Garrett Lombard lends his wonderful basso profundo to several supporting roles, including an earnest, fiery Hotspur. It’s a strong company, especially working as a collective body, even if you expect to see better individual performances in future Henriads.
If you know these plays well, you can’t help but notice the cuts. It’s a credit to O’Rowe, Hynes and a fine acting troupe that you can overlook the liberties taken to see the work in a clear light at a different angle. No matter if a speech is lost or character excised; we all know where the bodies are buried.—David Cote
Gerald W. Lynch Theater (Off Broadway). By William Shakespeare. Adapted by Mark O’Rowe. Directed by Garry Hynes. With ensemble casts. Running time: 7hr 19mins. Three intermissions. Timing of individual plays: Richard II (1hr 35mins); Henry IV, Part 1 (1hr 30mins); Henry IV, Part 2 (1hr); Henry V (1hr 25mins).