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| Photo By Rich Sofranko |
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Rob Jansen, Corinne Mohlenhoff, Kelly Mengelkoch and Brian Isaac Phillips in CSF's Henry V
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In their new production of
Henry V at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival (CSF), actor Brian Isaac Phillips and director R. Chris Reeder have elected to make the king blunt of tongue, transparent of motive and uncomplicated as to personality. Robed and crowned for his throne room he's a medieval Mr. Nice Guy -- soft spoken and reasonable, courteous, sensitive and outgoing. Garbed for combat in a doublet emblazoned with the rampant royal lion of England and the
fleur de lis of France he is furious, forceful and implacable -- thundering judgments, wreaking havoc and retribution. Phillips and Reeder have chosen to present this most popular of Shakespeare's monarchs as stalwart, heroic and arrow-purposed -- with plentiful intelligence but less complexity than the script's swift poetry and tangled but clearly explicated plot permit.
Thus simply shaped, the play rockets forward along its three-hour trajectory but remains too often a text without illuminating subtext, an exhibition without sufficient exploration -- shouts without echoes. This is not CSF's best showing of a Shakespeare history, nor is this the most nuanced or persuasive performance by the enormously able Phillips.
Audiences first encounter the man who will become Henry V as the brawling Prince Hal in two earlier history plays (the two parts of Henry IV) which are more about larking with his buddy Falstaff than about problems in retaining the crown Henry IV usurped. When Henry dies, in a transformation as lightning fast as the one on the road to Damascus that turned rebellious Saul into saintly Paul, rapscallion Hal turns into sober, stately, kingly Henry V.
Immediately he readies himself and rallies his country to exert claims to the lands and crown of France. A dandied-up French princeling taunts Henry with an insulting gift of tennis balls, and the war is on. On a field near Agincourt the French army suffers monumental losses to a far smaller English force. England prevails. Henry woos the French princess and welds crowns and countries together -- at least momentarily.
Warrior kings can make for popular entertainment in time of war. On film, Laurence Olivier's bold, leaderly Henry V stirred hearts and strengthened hands during World War II. Kenneth Branagh's more recent Henry V, filmed in less perilous times, is more contemplative, less straightforwardly patriotic -- or, as one Shakespeare commentator put it, "more suspicious of the glamorization of war." Now, rousing though some of its battle scenes are, CSF's Henry V seems curiously less apposite to and more remote from our own current time of war.
Reeder has an extremely able company of players to work with. Except for Phillips, all actors appear in multiple roles -- sometimes crossing gender, often making it seem that there are well more than 11 people filling the stage. And there are exemplary performances at every hand. Among them, here's the luminous Corinne Mohlenhoff as a delightful princess of France, mangling her way though an English lesson with a sly and sprightly companion, Anita Ross. And there's Mohlenhoff as a boy offering rueful commentary on the battlefield, and Ross leading the mourning after Falstaff's off-stage death. Here's Jeffrey Sanders, spluttering hilariously as the brave Fluellen, Joshua Neth scheming as the shamming Bardolph, Jeremy Dubin enraged and enraging as sleazy Pistol, and Rob Jansen remote and cold as King Charles of France.
However, Dubin's narrative sequences, as Chorus, are more frenetic than energetic. And while Matt Johnson's Exeter is controlled and focused, it is disfigured with a distracting, half-skinhead haircut. Reeder's staging of the siege at Harfleur is as powerful as anything CSF has ever offered. Costumes (Heidi Jo Schiemer) are attractive, and the set and lights (by someone listed in the program as "DAK") supply an engaging environment for the action. Grade: B
HENRY V, presented by the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, continues through Jan. 30.
