Sir John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders, left) is confronted on the battlefield by King Henry IV (Dakin Matthews) and his son and heir, Prince Hal (Elijah Jones). This photograph and banner by Gerry Goodstein.
The actor Dakin Matthews won a special Drama Desk award in 2003 for adapting both parts of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV into a single, albeit lengthy, version produced at Lincoln Center. His edit allowed regional theaters to present the histories of Henry IV; his son Prince Hal; and the roguish Falstaff in one production, lessening the expense of mounting two separate ones. The adaptation removes lesser characters, such as Mouldy and Rumour in part 2, and trims extended metaphors and a lot of obscure Elizabethan humor. But the famous scenes and lines remain—“I am not only witty in myself, but the cause of wit in other men,” “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” “We have heard the chimes at midnight.”
The biggest hurdle is still the wealth of historical characters, and in Eric Tucker’s revival at Theater for a New Audience, with Matthews himself, balancing worry and majesty as Henry IV, it’s often hard to follow the various factions. (A sketch in the 1960 revue Beyond the Fringe hilariously mocked the histories’ galloping pentameters and the slew of nobles named for British counties.) Not helping is that Tucker’s staging in the round means that it’s sometimes hard to hear actors facing away.
Dakin Matthews plays King Henry IV in his own Drama Desk–winning adaptation of the two parts of Shakespeare’s history plays. Photograph by Hollis King.
Henry IV, a story of fathers and sons, has four major principals: Henry Plantagenet, aka Prince Hal (Elijah Jones), feels coldness from his father and seeks attention from the surrogate figure of Sir John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders), a cadging, heavy-drinking, blustering scoundrel, whose company Hal has kept for three months in public taverns and on the streets. When they do come face to face, Henry rebukes Hal:
For thou hast lost thy princely privilege
With vile participation. Not an eye
But is a-weary of thy common sight,
Save mine, which hath desired to see thee more.
Meanwhile, young Harry Percy (James Udom), aka Hotspur, is the epitome of what Hal should be, and the King knows it. Hotspur is ready to fight, to lead armies, to make demands and decisions. But he seems to interact less with his father than his uncle Thomas, the Earl of Worcester (Steven Epp), who is plotting rebellion.
Hal is also difficult to like because, in an early soliloquy, he reveals himself a ruthless manipulator of his companions:
Steven Epp (left) plays the Earl of Worcester, a rebel plotting an uprising with his nephew Hotspur (James Udom) against Henry IV. Photograph by Gerry Goodstein.
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humor of your idleness…
And, like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o’er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
Jones’s well-spoken performance lacks a sense that Hal is actually torn between enjoying the roistering life and his duty to the kingdom. His Machiavellian exposes his cruelty and contempt toward Sanders’s Falstaff. Therein lies a wider problem: Hal and Falstaff are supposed to be drinking buddies, but Jones and Sanders lack chemistry. There is no sense of a surrogate father and his son. At times Sanders’s delivery suggests an Elizabethan W.C. Fields, but more often his countenance suggests a beaten dog who keeps coming back for more.
James Udom’s Hotspur starts out electrically, speaking the verse vigorously, but after the first intermission his energy seems to diminish, until he recovers somewhat before his fatal battle with Hal. He has a terrific scene with his wife, Kate (Cara Ricketts), Lady Percy, who holds her own with him. Late in the play Ricketts is even better: her fiery scene berating Hotspur’s father (Michael Rogers), for his reluctance to send his own troops to help Hotspur, thus leaving her a widow, is the best in the play.
Jones as Hal (left) drinks with Poins (Jordan Bellow), one of Falstaff’s roistering followers, in Eastcheap. Photograph by Hollis King.
The time was, father-in-law, that you broke your word,
When you were more endear’d to it than now;
When your own Percy, when my heart’s dear Harry,
Threw many a northward look to see his father
Bring up his powers; but he did long in vain.
With so many actors, a certain unevenness is perhaps inevitable. The autumnal scenes between Shallow (John Keating) and Silence (Epp) should work better, but Keating punches the verse when more serenity is needed. Epp is also excellent as Francis, the servant at Mistress Quickly’s Eastcheap tavern, and Nigel Gore shows an easy command of the language playing several men with power. In the lower half of society, Elan Zafir is a rough-hewn Bardolph (one of Falstaff’s minions) and a rugged Hastings. But even with its drawbacks, TFANA’s production is worth catching to see the entire Falstaff story, set in the sweep of 15th-century life.
Theater for a New Audience’s production of Henry IV runs through March 2 at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center (262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; there are no performances Feb. 26 and 27. For tickets and more information, visit tfana.org.
Playwright: William Shakespeare
Adaptation: Dakin Matthews
Director: Eric Tucker
Scenic Designer: Jimmy Stubbs
Costume Designers: Catherine Zuber & AC Gottlieb
Lighting Designer: Nicole E. Lang
Sound Designer & Composer: Jane Shaw
Hair & Wig Designer: Tom Watson
