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by William Shakespeare, directed by Jeannette Lambermont

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

June 2-November 4, 2001

"Eke out our performance with our video"

The "Henry V" now playing at the Stratford Festival is the most misguided production of this play I have ever seen.  All five productions of Shakespeare currently on offer at Stratford provide only superficial readings of their texts.  Jeannette Lambermont goes these one better by given us a reading that is not only superficial but directly contrary to the text.  What we have is a "Henry V" that is conceptually a mess.  Add to this a perverse design concept and a weak performance by the actor in the title role and this "Henry V" becomes another must-miss at Stratford.

"Henry V" presents us with title character's threefold triumph: over insurgents at home, over the French at Agincourt and over the French princess Katherine in courtship.  It's most notable structural feature is a Chorus who sets scenes, fills us in on past and future events and constantly appeals to our imagination to give fullness to the actions played out before us.  "Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them, Printing their proud hoofs i' th' receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts must deck our kings" or later "Still be kind, And eke out our performance with your mind".  The play is the most theatrical of the canon with the Chorus regularly bringing to our notice that we are watching a play, a totally inadequate representation of a real historical event.  The subject of the play is the power of language to fashion reality in the theatre, politics and love.

Lambermont has not grasped this.  Instead of having us "eke out" the performance with our minds, she has a large screen at the back of the stage showing still or moving images to set scenes and portray the action.  We don't need to "think" that we see horses when they are mentioned because she shows us a video of them.  With this bit of technological hubris she ruins Shakespeare's fullest meditation on the relation of theatre to reality.  As if that gimmick were not enough, Lambermont has decided that Paul Dunn playing the Boy should also be an amateur videographer documenting the action.  We are periodically treated to his jerky efforts and to a speech delivered "Blair Witch"-like into his camera and shown on the screen behind.  Is there a point to this?  No, Lambermont has simply let her inimical concept to triumph over sense.  Besides this, Lambermont has an itinerant musician, Jill Vitols, playing an amplified cello to provide live accompaniment.  I didn't mind this when the music served to cover scene changes but when the cellist adds illustrative plucks and glissandi while actors were speaking it is clear Lambermont has really no respect for Shakespeare's words. 

Dany Lyne's design provides no relief from this nonsense.  For a play where the action is specifically located on the "unworthy scaffold" of a bare stage, Lyne has designed set with a trench in the orchestra pit, a playing area on the stage apron and a huge ramp on what looking like a ship-builder's scaffold fallen askew--another willful misreading of the text.  Lyne's costumes carry on the stylistic mishmash from Patrick Clark in "Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2".  All the English, except Henry when in state, wear black and in battle look like World War I soldiers.  The French are clad in powder-blue Renaissance outfits that make the men look like members of a cross-dresser's society.  Bonnie Beecher does her best in trying to make the many black-on-black scenes look less tawdry but her best moments are a series of spotlit battle excerpts.

The dog's breakfast the Lambermont and Lyne have made of the work might somehow be palatable if it were seasoned with fine performances, but, alas, this is not the case.  Graham Abbey simply does not have the presence let alone the charisma to make a convincing Henry V.  The delivery of Henry's famous speeches is loud but not rousing.  Except for his pontificating it is often hard to pick him out from his soldiers.  His pronounced Southern Ontario accent was fine when he was Prince Hal slumming it in "Henry IV, 1 & 2".  But as King Henry it makes him sound like the leader of a high school debating team not like a British monarch.  He is best in his wooing of Katherine where he must seem awkward and uncomplicated. 

Undermined as she is by the director, Seana McKenna makes a good Chorus, though her sometimes arch approach makes her seem more like a reader at a childrens’ story-hour than the mediator between Shakespeare and a present-day audience.  For the finest performances one has to look to some of the minor characters--Brad Rudy (Exeter), Bernard Hopkins (Archbishop of Canterbury), Diane D'Aquila (back in form as Mistress Quickly), Keith Dinicol (Pistol) and Barry MacGregor (Bardolph).  Domini Blythe (Alice) and Sara Topham (Katherine) make the English lesson of Act 3 and the wooing scene of Act 5 the two best scenes in the play.

The rest of the cast is adequate to mediocre.  Nicolas Van Burek (Dauphin) soon becomes annoying with his overemphatic delivery, and Wayne Best (the Welsh Captain Fluellen) uses an accent that seems to locate Wales somewhere between India and Pakistan. 

For me, the best production of "Henry V" was the one at Stratford directed by John Wood in 1989 with Geraint Wyn Davies as Henry and William Needles as the Chorus.  Besides deep insight into all aspects of the play, that production had what this production so sadly lacks--a sense of irony.  With Needles dressed as an elderly war veteran, we could not assume that his portrayal of the events was accurate.  Where Lambermont makes Henry's frequent appeals to God sincere, Wood made them look like another calculated political move far more in keeping with the devious Prince Hal of the earlier plays.

The only reason to see this "Henry V" is if you have already seen "Henry IV, Part 1 & 2" and want to see how the story continues.  Stratford has presented the play four times before but never in the same year as the two that precede it.  If, however, you are only interested in "Henry V", don't waste your money.  Take Jeannette Lambermont's approach to its logical conclusion – rent the video.

Photo: Graham Abbey, Sara Topham and Domini Blyth. ©2001 Cylla von Tiedemann.