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IV star Henry

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

That bright, gleaming gift is director Jack O?Brien?s epic, blood-stirring production of Shakespeare?s ?Henry IV,? with Part I and Part II, each segment usually played alone, conjoined into an absolutely gripping and frequently very moving three-and-three-quarter hours duration, as adapted and trimmed by Dakin Matthews, who also appears in the show.
O?Brien is, of course, one half of that team of key Irish-American contributors to the event, the other being actor Michael Hayden, who took over the central role of Henry, Prince of Wales, the future Henry V, rather late in the rehearsal period upon the defection of the actor initially cast in the part.
Director O?Brien has created the finest American Shakespeare production within memory, and Hayden?s sensitive, intelligent contribution is as effective as it is self-effacing.
Much praise has been heaped upon Kevin Kline?s extraordinary Sir John Falstaff and, to an only slightly lesser degree, on Ethan Hawke?s boyish, impulsive Henry Percy, called ?Hotspur? for fairly evident reasons.
In seeing this roiling, surgingly massive staging, it would be impossible not to be struck by the enormity of O?Brien?s creative part in an endeavor, but Hayden?s gloriously wrought Prince Hal, while hardly going unnoticed, might easily escape full measure of praise for the resounding quality and stability it brings to the overall venture.
Much has been made in certain quarters of the emphasis placed on clarity in the adaptation by veteran actor and teacher, Dakin Matthews, who also appears in the cast, first as Chief Justice Warwick and then as Owen Glendower.
Without the benefit of specific and intense study, aspects of the plays of William Shakespeare can remain opaque to even the most alert of theatergoers, and there?s considerable truth in a remark credited to the late Sir John Gielgud. The venerable actor, perhaps more at home in the Bard?s works than any other major actor of his generation is supposed to have said to a young actor visiting him backstage after a performance: ?The great thing about playing Shakespeare, dear boy, is that they don?t know what you?re saying anyway.?
The relentless stress placed by director O?Brien and his actors on lucidity and comprehension from start to finish pays abundant dividends in every possible respect. The excellent and extensive program notes provided by Dramaturg Anne Cattaneo help enormously, too.
Kline?s revelatory Falstaff throws a cleansing light on the relationship between him and the fun-loving, even somewhat wayward Prince Hal, neatly underscored by the inherent sobriety and intelligence brought to the role of the royal stripling by Hayden, one of the most underrated of first rank American actors.
Sir John Falstaff is, after all, a well-educated, albeit somewhat chaotic, member of an aristocratic family, a clan which has long since fallen on hard times and become adjusted to a life less elegant than the one they had known in the past.
Under-appreciated by his own father, King Henry IV, a man consumed by guilt over his usurpation of the crown, Hal has turned to the fat, sack-loving knight as a kind of parents surrogate, Falstaff, it may be fairly safely assumed, has been the source of much of the young prince?s education in matters worldly and otherwise.
Many productions present Falstaff as a fat, self-indulgent, almost mindless clown, a figure of fun in the rowdy Eastcheap taverns and alehouses he frequents with such regularity.
Not so with the unforgettable Sir John created by actor Kline, virtually unrecognizable in the role not so much because of his fat suit and his abundant facial hair, but because of the transformative voice he has chosen to employ for the occasion. Kline?s Falstaff is very definitely the capstone of his career-to-date and it?s a towering achievement that, in some ways, reexamines and reinvigorates the entire play.
Kline and Hayden, though they form the living, breathing core of O?Brien?s wondrous production, are hardly the whole show, surrounded as they are by fine actors doing inspired work.
Richard Easton, who won a Tony Award two seasons ago for his work in Tom Stoppard?s rich ?The Invention of Love,? might seem more ideally suited by nature for ?Richard II? than ?Henry IV.? He nevertheless provides a stalwart, credible king and his final scene, with Hal first trying on and then absconding with the crown, is truly memorable.
Ethan Hawke is perhaps a touch young and a bit insubstantial to be an entirely credible Hotspur, to some extent a yapping Jack Russell terrier puppy where a genuinely menacing pit bull is needed, but, through sheer dint of will, he eventually triumphs. His scenes with his wife, Lady Percy eloquently played by Audra McDonald, seem to have suffered a bit in adaptor Matthews? version, losing, among other things, much of the Welsh language which normally enlivens the moments they share.
Other standouts in O?Brien?s universally strong cast are the unfailing Dana Ivey as an unusually sympathetic Mistress Quickly, and, briefly Lady Northumberland, Byron Jennings as Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, and Jeff Weiss as the aged, spavined Justice Shallow.
Also worthy of mention are Lorenzo Pisoni?s John of Lancaster, Stevie Ray Dallimore?s Lord Hastings, Stephen deRosa?s vivid Bardolph, and Tom Bloom, doubling first as the Archbishop of York and then, virtually beyond recognition, reappearing as Justice Silence in the scenes laid in Gloucestershire.
Jack O?Brien?s massive ?Henry IV? is a creature of fire, noise and nearly incredible vigor, making endlessly inventive use of Ralph Funicello?s enormous but flexible wood-heavy sets, brilliantly lighted by Brian MacDevitt. Jess Goldstein?s costumes, looking lived-in and opulently ceremonial as required, help tremendously, as does the music and sound plot contributed by Mark Bennett.
It would be superb if America had a genuine National Theatre, such as Britain?s Royal National, or particularly its Royal Shakespeare Company, which in its now-vanished halcyon days, could produce the Chronicles in the correct historical order, starting at Stratford-Upon-Avon and then transferring the shows into their London home.
Now, of course, the RSC has lost its London home, and its very existence is, to a degree, threatened. Meanwhile, we don?t have a true National Theatre, and plans for establishing one mainly linger in the vague and evanescent realm of dreams.
All honor, then, is due to the Lincoln Center Theater for creating a climate where a glory such as Jack O?Brien?s ?Henry IV? can flourish and thrill.

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