Henry 5
Numerous heavy hitters have weighed in against the king. Swinburne called him a heartless egoist. To Yeats he was “as remorseless and undistinguished as a natural force.” Harold Bloom seconded Yeats’s characterization of Henry as an “amiable monster.” But the movies have been good to him: Olivier and Branagh loaded their cinematic portrayals with enough noble patriotism to make Dick Cheney look like a peacenik. The most interesting productions navigate between these extremes, somehow convincing the audience to care about a self-described Christian monarch who sends his friends to the executioner, threatens his enemies with rape and dismemberment, and orders prisoners of war up for slaughter. In Next Theatre Company’s 1995 production, director Kate Buckley–perhaps the city’s best interpreter of Shakespeare–set an ingenious middle course: her Hal was an ambitious junior executive suddenly handed the reins of power upon his father’s death, and his ruthless war on France was the result of equal parts naivete, poor counsel, and blood lust.
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Choosing to treat armed conflict as sport, this production does offer a refreshing alternative to the dour chest thumping that often overruns Shakespeare’s history plays. It also allows for ample humor, especially in the treatment of the French court: the king is an effete squirrel with an Inspector Clouseau accent, dressed like an overblown window treatment in a New Orleans mausoleum. His retinue seem to have little to do but eat fruit and wear tights. When the French court is in session, some aristocrat unrolls a fancy rug and all the French stand motionless upon it, as though they could pose their way to victory.
