Henry V
William Shakespeare
 | ||
| Daniel José Molina as King Henry V |
“Therefore take heed
how you impawn one person,
How you awake our
sleeping sword of war.
We charge you in the
name of God, take heed;
For never two such
kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of
blood.”
The King who looks squarely, calmly, and bluntly into the
eyes of the Archbishop of Canterbury – a man willing to deposit huge amounts of
Church money to persuade the King to battle hated France – this King is clearly
not the same Prince Hal who once spent his nights in the dark alleys and bars
of London with his rotund, rascally pal, Sir John Falstaff. In this 2018 Oregon Shakespeare Festival
staging of William Shakespeare’s King
Henry V, the prince-now-king is once again played by Daniel José Molina as
he did in the 2017 Henry IV, Parts One
and Two, but now his Prince Hal’s entire persona, demeanor, and even
countenance has solidified into a young King Henry V of steady mind and steely
resolve.
While Shakespeare’s preceding two plays detail the slow
sunset of one king and the even slower, more unsure sunrise of his unruly son,
his brilliantly written King Henry V
leaves no doubt that here is a king still young in age but mature beyond what
both his friends and foes expect. We and
they soon learn that this youthful-looking king brings much depth of insight
about the costs of war, much courage to undertake great risks for a country he
cherishes, and much wisdom to leave hot-blooded decisions of his youth long
behind in order to make measured, just decisions that send important,
long-reaching messages to his court, his
armies, and his subjects.
 |
| Daniel José Molina as King Henry V with His Troops |
However good Daniel José Molina was one year prior as Prince
Hal (a role I describe in my review of Parts
One and Two as “magnificent in a role that stretches the ranges of Hal’s
maturity and manners to great widths”), he is even more stunningly superb as
now Henry V. Time and again, Shakespeare
gives Henry some of the greatest lines ever written to describe the horrors of
the battlefield and the resulting demise to families, words to provide courage
and encouragement to soldiers even as they face enemy many times their numbers,
and passages to ponder what it means to be a sovereign leader with the
sleepless nights that come with such a responsibility. Mr. Molina bravely takes on the titular role
that the likes of Lawrence Olivier, Tom Hiddleston, and Kenneth Branagh have
graced the silver screen; and the up-close interpretation we watch in the
intimate OSF Thomas Theatre allows his Henry V to join that level of arresting
performances.
His is a king who is still very approachable, human, and
down-to-earth, as is seen in a moving scene where he disguises himself and
wanders around speaking and sparring in words with his soldiers. But, as portrayed by Mr. Molina, this is also
a newly crowned monarch who stands apart from all others in his quiet
confidence in his own decisions, his calm and reassuring manner of making the
toughest decisions, and his ability to inspire men on their way to almost a
sure death. With deep-set eyes that
communicate a steadiness others willingly follow, this King is exactly who
Shakespeare must have had in mind when he penned lines like the famous,
pre-battle speech to his group of generals at Agincourt, forever known as the
“Band of Brothers” speech:
“From
this day to the end of the world,
But
we in it shall be remembered –
We
few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For
he today that shed his blood with me
Shall
be my brother.”
The excellence of Daniel José Molina’s performance is made
all the more so as he is surrounded by a cast of able actors who play multiple
roles in quick-change fashion on the floor-level stage, only a few feet from an
audience that surrounds on three sides.
Rex Young is the persistent, pressing Archbishop of Canterbury who advocates
war with France for his own reasons quite apart what is really good for
England. He then switches to become a
fair-reasoning, perceptible King of France (Charles VI) who seems to have
intuition that this Henry is no longer Hal.
 |
| Moses Villarama & Tyrone Wilson |
Among other roles, Moses Villarama is the hot-headed, brash
Dauphin, son of King Charles who so underestimates the young Henry, teasing him
and making a huge mistake of sending a peace offering of tennis balls. That latter act by the immature French Prince
offers Shakespeare the chance to write a wonderful set of lines about the balls
that Henry and the French emissary, Montjoy, get to volley back and forth, the
herald played with fabulous French accent and demeanor by Jessica Ko.
 |
| Jessica Ko & Daniel José Molina |
Jessica Ko is also the other child of Charles VI, Katherine,
a princess who becomes part of the peace settlement between victorious England
and a soundly defeated France. The scene
of Henry courting the French-speaking maiden in his English-only quest for her
statement of love is one of the highlights of the entire production, with both
actors showing signs of awkward, coy, shy, forward, and delightfully eager all
within the same, short sequence.
 |
| Michele Mais & Kimberly Scott |
Part of that scene’s fun comes from a closely watching
Lady-in-Waiting of the Princess, a stern looking but happy hearted Alice,
played by Michele Mais. Ms. Mais also
reprises her 2017, gloriously funny role as Hostess Quickly. While she has fewer opportunities to show the
bawdy humor of the past, it is her womanhood as a wife that reigns forth in
this outing, especially in a scene where she says good-bye to her newly wed,
off-to-battle husband (Ancient Pistol, played by Kimberly Scott) and his
common-folk cohorts. The farewell and
tears by all is a touching reminder by Shakespeare of the thousands of such
farewells – many final – that occur prior to every soldier embarking into a
war, no matter what era or what set of sparring enemies.
The brutalities of battle symbolically and powerfully come
to full life only a few feet from us as audience under the commanding direction
of Rosa Joshi. Scenes of hand-to-hand
conflict, surprise confrontation, and deadly blows play out as a kind of bloody
ballet as actors are one moment charging and dying as English; and in the next,
the same as French. While the time is
clearly of another age, the timeless aspect of all battlefields is accentuated
through the bone-rattling booms of modern cannons and artillery (Palmer
Hefferan, Sound Designer) and the blasts of light from exploding, present-day
grenades (Geoff Korf, Lighting) -- all on a fifteenth-century, French field
where we know future wars of the twentieth-century will spill likened blood of
the thousands who fight there.
Director Joshi employs numerous devices to transform this
rather small cast into hordes of fighting and dying soldiers. With the lighting help of Geoff Korf where
paired fighters are for an instance encased in a spotlighted box of horror, Director
Joshi and Fight Director U. Jonathan Toppo guide the roaring battlers through
many frames of seconds-long, paired conflicts; frozen moments of death; and
sudden rushes and retreats of soldiers in full voice of screaming bold shouts
of attack and agony cries of injury. In
one incredible sequence, one soldier becomes a thousand as attacks come at her
over and again, with blood in the form of scores of long, red rags gushing forth. Those same rags – part of Richard L. Hay’s
simple but highly effective set design and properties – come to represent the
fallen bodies of both armies whose dead look the same when left lying in a
field where their supposed differences led to their deaths.
While so much works so well in this production of Henry V, there are a few, rather minor
issues. The continual and often abrupt
switches of actors from one role, one gender, one nationality to the next is
sometimes confusing to understand who now is speaking among the thirty-plus
speaking roles along with the roles as Chorus that the dozen actors
portray. The first half of the play
sometimes drags a bit in all the build-up toward the never-pausing in action
second half. This is especially true
when scenes of the commoners occur -- the pun-filled patrons of the two parts
of Henry IV as well as Merry Wives, Pistol, Nim, and Bardolph
-- that do not work as well in this outing as in the previous plays. That all said, these are only minor blemishes
in an otherwise near-flawless production.
The 2018 OSF production of King Henry V is a close-up, intense look into the face of a young
leader who must make decisions that will cost many lives for a cause that one
cannot help but wonder how it can be deemed worthy of such a price. The battle before us becomes Every War; and
the individual combatants, Every Soldier.
William Shakespeare, Rosa Joshi, Daniel José Molina, and the rest of
this cast and creative team combine efforts to remind us that however sure and
inspirational the leader, the costs of decisions are never any more noble than
the dying breath of those unnamed many who fall again and again and again.
And as the epilogue so telling reminds us, the victory and
final peace of Henry V will soon be
completely and horrifically undone in Henry
VI. And so goes the world to this
day.
Rating: 4.5 E
Henry V continues
through October 27, 2018 at at the Thomas Theatre at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Tickets are
available at https://www.osfashland.org/on-stage.
Photos
by Jenny Graham
No comments:
Post a Comment