Shakespeare’s great war pageant Henry V undergoes a modern industrial tint in this year’s Houston Shakespeare Festival. The minimalist design from Kalliope Vlohos uses scaffolding repurposed for staircases, battlements, thrones. Banners and pennants drop down from the flies.
The English forces are dressed by Amber Stepanik in caps of red; the French in blue. All wear fatigues and combat boots, except the Princess of France in sensible slippers. Hints of glamour appear in Henry’s dazzlingly bright court robe or the marabou trim on the French Herald’s hat. The lighting by Clint Allen sidelights the proceedings, but then turns blood red in the background when the battles commence.
If slightly unpopulated by 12 actors playing multiple roles, all are individualized fairly well although the accents are wayward – Welsh, Irish, Cockney, French, royal – and sometimes trip up the antique flow of the Bard. Director Jack Young, artistic director of this annual festival at Miller Outdoor Theatre, produced by the University of Houston, moves Shakespeare’s pre-cinematic history play with speed and adroitness. There are many back slaps and “hail fellow, well met” gestures that bring the soldiers’ camaraderie smack up to date but still seem anachronistic in opposition to the rich language.
The battle scenes are slightly kung fu-inspired with metal staffs that wondrously turn into long bows during Agincourt, while Young’s choreography features a lot of stomping and running in circles. When you only have 12 players to portray an entire medieval army, what else can you do? Right from the intro, the Chorus (the entire ensemble) implores us to use our imagination to see the spectacle, “O pardon, since a crookèd figure may attest in little place a million, and let us, ciphers to this great account, on your imaginary forces work.”
Yet this puny army account actually works well. The play is chock-a-block with characters great and small, enough counts and marshals and royalty to pack any stage, so this decoction whittled down to a dozen people donning and doffing a hat to switch roles is perfectly effective. And it’s always fun to see someone in a prior scene transform into someone else.
As with all HSF productions, the acting is top-notch and Shakespeare emerges with grand power.
Broadway star Michael Thatcher (Wicked, The Play That Goes Wrong) and University of Houston alumnus returns to his alma mater as Henry, and he brings masculine allure and a soldier’s posture to this once-profligate heir now turned ready to lead a nation. His startling command to the Governor of Harfleur to capitulate or all hell will befall the citizens speaks of his new resolve, “The gates of mercy shall be all shut up, and the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart, in liberty of bloody hand, shall rage with conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass your fresh fair virgins and your flow’ring infants.” Harfleur surrenders.
Henry’s “wooing scene” with Katherine, Princess of France (a dewy, spring-like Madison Prentiss) who says coquettishly, “I cannot speak your England” – and whose first scene with her maid is entirely in French and broken English, a lovely surprise from master Shakespeare – is a delight, showing the king to be a bit overwhelmed and shy, yet persistent and heartfelt, like mapping out a battle plan, and he means to capture Katherine.
His iconic speech to his troops at Harfleur, “Once more unto the breach,” and when he implores his beleaguered and outmatched troops to fight for the chance of lasting glory at Agincourt, “St. Crispian’s Day,” were stirring indeed. We’d follow this king into battle, too.
Especially good were the bumpkins, Bardolph (James Cardwell), Nym (Brandon Carter), and Pistol (Kyle Clark), who don’t want to be anywhere near the French army. Henry orders former carousing buddy Bardolph to hang for stealing from a looted church, another psychological aspect of Henry growing into the role of monarch that Shakespeare details in swift aside. Also good, Austin Hanna as pompous French Messenger (he of the marabou hat) and French King; Miranda Marques as Mistress Quickly; Forrest Stringfellow – what an Elizabethan name! – as Welsh patriot Fluellen; and Molly Wetzel as the adolescent, preening Dauphin.
Edited for this performance at Miller, this epic Plantagenet pageant, written sometime in the waning days of the Virgin Queen, comes at you with banners waving, arrows flying, and the stench of death. It’s all English pride etched with bold strokes. War in all its glories and horrors; all there in the complex character of Henry V and his world.
Performances are scheduled through August 2-9 at 8:15 p.m. with a pre-show Bard Talk beginning at 7:45 p.m. as follows:
Henry V. August 2, 4, 6 and 8.
As You Like It. August 5, 7 and 9.
Miller Outdoor Theatre, 6000 Hermann Park Drive. For more information, call 832-487-7102 or visit milleroutdoortheatre.com. Free admittance
