Henry V at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
Ever since I saw Shakespeare's Henry V - the Lawrence Olivier film version - as a kid, I've found this play intriguing. It even featured in one of my stories, The Intergalactic Shakespeare Festival. So of course when we were visiting Ashland last week, I had to see what the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) would do with it.
First, some scene-setting: Ashland has several theaters, but the one in which this was staged is modeled on Elizabethan theaters. I've been to the new Globe in London, and this was very similar. It has a Tudor multi-level stage at one end, surrounded by bleachers, except they have chairs, not benches. It's open air, which didn't matter too much because Ashland is hot! and the play only started at 8.30 p.m., after sunset.
CONTEXT: History, Politics, and Why it Matters.
Earlier that day, we went to the "Preface" - a talk and slide-show that provides context. In this case, it was invaluable. The speaker set the scene, providing not only the historical background but the political situation in Shakespeare's time. Henry V has a somewhat tenuous legal claim to the throne because his father essentially stole it from Richard II, the rightful king, and then jumped ahead of heirs with a stronger claim. In addition, he also has a tenuous legal claim to the throne of France, in the right of his grandfather, Edward III, whose mother was a French princess. The church hierarchy, which was threatened with a loss of their lands and rights to the crown, offered Henry V both the excuse and the funding for a war with France.
Politically, it resonated with the English of the time: Queen Elizabeth I, who had proved a great monarch, was aging and childless, and had not named an heir. Everyone wondered what would happen next, and feared that the transition would not be peaceful.
The play itself had a theme for our times: War. The glory, and the horror.
ON THE STAGE
OSF emphasized this theme with the costumes. They weren't quite modern-day, but they weren't Elizabethan either. The color palette was all grays and browns and blacks for the English, white and blue for the French.
The opening was dramatic: A phalanx of actors came onstage, and shouted the prologue's lines, jumping from actor to actor. The effect was militaristic and stirring. That set the scene for a play that was both, though I have to say it leaned more to the horrors than to the glory, more reminiscent of the Branagh film version than the Olivier one. In the execution of Bardolph, King Harry strangles him with his own hands, then tenderly closes his eyes.
I wasn't so impressed with the Princess Katherine role - though of course she doesn't have much of one. She only has two scenes, one with her with her lady, and then the courting scene at the end. They played the first with her in a bubble bath, which was meant to be sweet and amusing, but ... well. It's not much of a scene anyway. Perhaps it has more impact on someone who speaks French. The scene with King Harry was pretty good.
The actor who played Exeter is deaf, so they integrated American Sign Language (ASL) - and interpretation - into the play. I'd read about this in advance, so I was expecting it. Some others, who weren't, found it confusing and distracting, especially if they didn't recognize it as ASL and only saw the actors making hand gestures without knowing why. I thought that it was actually used very effectively in some of the scenes, notably when Exeter carries England's threat to the Dauphin of France.
On the whole, I'd say it was a good play, but for me it didn't quite come together. It tried to balance the horror and glory too evenly; and I think it's difficult to pull off in the duration of a play.
They prohibited photography inside the theater, even before the play started; so here's a Creative Commons image from Wikipedia. (And the 'logo' at the top of this post is another one of my Shakespeare's Thumbnails series of graphics.)
