Loyal to the King

Rebels against the King

Inhabitants of the town and tavern

Oddsmakers might not have given the nod to the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival last weekend at the blustery opening performance of Henry IV Part One.

The temperature had plummeted nearly 30 degrees since midafternoon. The wind off Lake Eola was whipping through the audience and blowing the actors' costumes hither and yon. And an oblivious disc jockey halfway up Washington Street was doing his best to drown out the amplified voices of a score of actors onstage.

But one look at the rapt faces of the audience members, their bodies huddled together for warmth but their eyes riveted on the stage, and you could tell in an instant which side had won out.

Shakespeare had done it again.

Director Russell Treyz and a marvelous cast of performers have found the humanity amid the history in Henry IV Part One, a play whose dry-as-dust title shouldn't keep anyone from tasting what it has in store. Forget the Lancasters, forget the Mortimers, forget all the earls and dukes. This Henry gets down to basics -- the battle raging inside one young man for his father's regard.

The festival has bent over backward trying to keep audiences from being put off by Henry IV Part One. Its marketers are billing the play as a comedy, although it's not, quite. A complicated insert in the program charts the circuitous entanglements between the play's major and minor characters. And a puppet show tacked onto the beginning makes an effort to explain Henry IV's background by detailing the kings who went before.

None of it is worth the bother: There's so much character amid the characters on the Lake Eola stage.

No one can miss distinguishing Tom Huston's keen-eyed Prince Hal, the profligate son of Henry IV, from Michael Nichols' rambunctious Hotspur, Henry's most dangerous adversary. No one can miss identifying the lords of the lands that are rebelling against the king: One is garbed in the weird robes of a Welshman, and another painted up to resemble a Braveheart kind of Scot.

And no one can miss feeling the pain in the failing friendship between Huston's Hal and Ron Schneider's Falstaff, the scurrilous ne'er-do-well who is losing the prince's allegiance as the young Hal grows into a man.

Manhood and one of its key elements, testosterone, are in plentiful supply in Treyz's production, which starts out with the clangorous scream of an electric guitar and rarely lets up.

The relationship between Hal and Hotspur, between Hal and Falstaff and between Hal and his father, Henry IV, are at the core of Treyz' production, which clearly presents all of the minor characters but never gets too caught up in their machinations. Richard Width seems to have fun with the other-worldly Welshman Glendower and even more so with Douglas, the dashing Scot; Alan Bruun finds a crafty edge in Worcester, Hotspur's uncle and fellow rebel.

But they and the others in minor roles are all backdrop to the drama in which Hal finds himself -- the drama of a young man facing the life to which he was born and facing up to the people who stand in his way.

Huston makes a canny Hal, a man who is ruled undeniably by his head -- and who contrasts vividly with Nichols' big-hearted, single-minded Hotspur, whose passion it is to fight the king. Nichols' Hotspur is almost goofy in his single-mindedness, like a quarterback before a big game; Huston's still boyish Hal is still learning his shrewdness, and he can be derailed in a dozen ways.

It's easy to see the kinship between this Hal and Robert Lee Martini's incisive Henry IV. And it's just as easy to see the unraveling of the relationship between Hal and Schneider's Falstaff, a bear of a man with just enough wisdom to see he's losing ground. Schneider makes a wonderful Falstaff, so at home with the people that he heads down into the audience to rouse them to his side; when Hal begins to reject this valiant old clown, you feel your heart beginning to break.

It's no mean feat to engage the heart, and this production does it again and again -- with the knowledge that a young woman has just become a widow, with the sight of a brave character, really no more than a walk-on, lying still on the stage. No one wins in the civil war between the Lancasters and the Mortimers, as in any civil war; no one wins when Hal fights Hotspur to the death. No one wins but the audience, which takes on a little of the abundant life upon this stage.

Tom Huston 
Copyright Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival

In the director's notes section of the Orlando-UCF Shakespeare Festival playbill, director Russell Treyz admits to some trepidation whenever approaching one of the bard's History Plays - "Will my History teacher suddenly leap up in the front row and begin grilling me on the details of the English Monarchy?" As an audience member, I must admit that I too am usually wrought with similar dread, albeit to a much lesser degree than a director must be. Should I buy Cliff Notes? I knew I shouldn't have sold my Western Civ II textbook at that garage sale. Is this guy that guy's brother? Who is the walrus? Why do there have to be so many damn Richards, Henrys, and Edwards, anyway? Why couldn't they throw in a Ned or a Pete or a Keanu every once in a while? As it turns out, Treyz needn't have worried, and neither should I have, for that matter. While this interpretation of Henry IV, Part 1 sticks to the standard historical period and setting one would expect from a Shakespeare Festival (unlike the inspired burst of creativity that informs A Midsummer Night's Dream), it is nonetheless an admirably well-crafted show. Russell Treyz succeeds in making a play of Shakespeare's oft-feared variety entertaining and accessible to a contemporary audience.

In a nutshell, Henry IV is about a faction of various nobles plotting to rebel against the newly-crowned King Henry (or, the artist formerly known as Bolingbroke), as he has not returned them the favors they have shown in helping him usurp the throne from Richard II. King Henry is also concerned about his son, Prince Hal, who shirks his princely duties in favor of living a life of drunken debauchery with Sir John Falstaff and the rest of the thieving rogues at the Boar's Head tavern.

The acting is quite good overall, most notably in the case of Ron Schneider as Falstaff. This character, like Bottom in Midsummer, is another great crowd pleaser of the Shakespearean universe, and seems pre-destined for closer inspection and attention, even on the page. Schneider breathes even more wonderful life into the character, and exudes robust vitality and bawdy fun whether expounding at length his grossly exaggerated tales of heroism or simply snoozing off a hangover upstage. With his rich booming voice, thick grey beard, and jolly girth, it seems a role Schneider was born to play. As Prince Hal, Tom Huston diplays nice emotional range and finds the right subtle shadings of humanity to make the character real. Robert Lee Martini deftly plays Henry with the regal demeanor befitting a king iandi the vulnerability of an ordinary man. Also noteworthy is Michael Nichols, as Hotspur, one of the rebelling nobles, whose lust for life and genuine bravado serve as an interesting equal-but-opposite counterpoint to the energetic buffoonery of Falstaff.

The costumes - designed by Nancy Leary - in addition to pleasing the eye, also serve as effective tools to convey social status and allegiance without being too much like uniforms. This made the plot easier to follow without "dumbing it down". (Although I did notice that a couple of the actors were wearing - EEK! - denim jeans under their tunics, but hey, that's the price you pay for having killer seats. If you're in the $6 section, disregard that last complaint.)

Okay, so here comes my big "But". No, not the one that follows a couple of paces behind me and likes the feel of corduroy. I'm talking about my numero uno gripe about an otherwise fine production - the music. No, I'm not talking about the generous soul with the boombox at Lake Eola who was apparently attempting to rouse the long-slumbering corpse of William Shakespeare himself with a 100 decibel interlude of Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" (thanks, buddy, and The Bard says hey!). I'm talking about the 1980's Queen-meets-Survivor guitar rock that punctuates the action of the play, especially the swordfighting scenes. Now, I'm not exactly one of these lutes-n-flutes historical purists or anything, but the music just really didn't gell with the tone of the play. I understand the intent behind using the music to engage and excite a modern audience, and if you're someone who saw and enjoyed all the Highlander movies maybe you'll disagree, but I just found it distracting. At one point, the combination of guitar rock, guys with swords, and intermittent bursts from a fog machine made me feel like I was at a Spinal Tap concert. Will the dwarves crush the 18-inch Stonehenge? Will the bass player escape from his pod in time for his solo? Now that's drama.

All kidding aside, Henry IV, Part 1 is definitely worth seeing, even if the battle scenes at the end leave you with a Velveeta kind of feeling. Who knows, maybe this is done intentionally to demonstrate the absurdity of violence and underscore Falstaff's contention that honor and valor through combat are essentially useless and hollow virtues. And in this increasingly violent and senseless world, is that such a bad message to present?