✭✭✭✩✩<b>
</b><b>by William Shakespeare, directed by Richard Monette
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
August 21-October 29, 2004
</b>
"Circumstantial Pomp”
Shakespeare’s late play “King Henry VIII”, written in 1613 with John Fletcher, has not been seen at Stratford since 1986. Then it was directed by Brian Rintoul and starred Leon Pownall in the title role with William Hutt as Cardinal Wolsey and Elizabeth Shepherd as Katherine of Aragon. Thanks to present director Richard Monette the show is rich in pageantry but because the key roles of Henry and Wolsey are miscast, it lacks the drama that made Rintoul’s production so exciting.
Written under the first Stuart king, James I, criticism of monarchs was not allowed while criticism of Catholicism was encouraged. Belying the play’s subtitle “All is True”, Shakespeare and Fletcher have the task of portraying Henry in the early years of his reign in a completely positive light. Thus we see blame for all misdeeds in the kingdom shifted onto Cardinal Wolsey, Henry chief advisor, who is portrayed as a sly Machiavellian who uses his power for personal gain.
The play is structured as a series of rotations of the wheel of fortune covering a period from 1521-1533. Three people fall from power--first the Duke of Buckingham, the most powerful noble in England, because of Wolsey’s enmity; then Henry’s queen of 20 years, Katherine of Aragon, because Wolsey emphasizes Henry’s sin of marrying his brother’s widow; and finally Wolsey himself when his chicanery is uncovered. The fourth fall, that of Thomas Cranmer, is immanent, but Henry, without Wolsey, is wiser than before and sees through the conspiracy himself to save Cramner and signal a break from Rome
The play ends with the birth of Elizabeth to Anne Bullen (as Shakespeare spells it), the king now supposedly reconciled to having woman as heir and with Cranmer’s prophesy of her future greatness. (The play focusses solely on Henry’s first two wives.) The implication is that just as the mature Henry was able to halt the turning of the wheel of fortune through his will, Elizabeth will do the same for all of England and lead the realm to unparalleled prosperity.
If the play is to seem more than merely a propagandistic royal pageant, it is essential that the roles of Henry and Wolsey be cast from strength. Sadly, that is not the case. Slim and beardless, Graham Abbey is certainly not the Henry one pictures, but he does convey the sense of a boyish king (who, though, at 30 would have been thought middle-aged at the time) who could be unaware of the malice of his chief counselor. Abbey’s Henry does grow from innocence to strength, but he never fully conveys a sense of majesty and never gives Henry a very distinct personality.
Walter Borden, who is so good at playing kind men, is never able to find the scornful duplicity in Wolsey. In 1986 William Hutt showed how great a role this is in playing a evil man who cloaks his greed and lust for power with sanctimony. This is essential to emphasize Wolsey’s subtle villainy, otherwise Henry appears naive or foolish. Monette, however, doesn’t see this since his programme note claims “there is no villain” in the play. Borden rises to the demands of the role only when Wolsey falls from power. Then the tone of sincerity he has used throughout is finally right.
It is left, then, to Seana McKenna in the play’s third great role, Katherine of Aragon, to steal the show. McKenna shows her as a formidable woman able to dispute with Wolsey better than her husband yet ready to submit with suppressed resentment when he casts her off. Shakespeare’s sense of human drama overcomes his whitewashing of Henry in a powerful depiction of Katherine after Henry has married Anne. Here, not unlike the deposed Richard II, the former queen accedes to her fate, forgives her accusers and prays for the wellbeing of her children and servants. McKenna, clearly delineating Katherine’s fall from strength to infirmity, makes this the most moving scene of the play.
Raymond O’Neill, strong though more histrionic than McKenna, sets the tone early on as first the confident then the outraged Duke of Buckingham led off to execution. Brian Tree succeeds in making us care about the innocent, wrongly accused Thomas Cranmer. Steven Sutcliffe in his short appearance as the Bishop of Winchester, a would-be Wolsey, shows more duplicity than Borden could muster.
Other fine performances come from Stephen Russell (the Duke of Norfolk, Thom Allsion (the Duke of Suffolk), Barry MacGregor (the Lord Chamberlain) and Chick Reid (as Anne Bullen’s servant). Sara Topham does not quite catch the irony in Anne Bullen, who supposedly despises wealth but is courted by a king.
Monette has staged the play as a succession of impressive pageants and processions, secular and ecclesiastical. In this Ann Curtis’s gorgeous, highly detailed period costumes have a starring role all their own, glittering under Kevin Fraser’s sensitive lighting. Not all of Monette’s choices, though, make sense. Why the sword fighting demonstration for Anne Bullen? Why push Henry out on a metal horse only to pull him back? Most damaging is his interpretation of the periodic commentary of the First and Second Gentlemen played by Paul Hopkins and Riley Wilson. They are supposed to represent the views of the people in general, but Monette turns them into lisping, effeminate royal-watchers whose simultaneous oohs are meant to provoke laughter. The result is the two now only represent themselves and their affectation trivializes the events they describe.
“King Henry VIII” is the fourth Shakespearean rarity on this year’s playbill along with “Timon of Athens”, “Cymbeline” and “King John”. “Henry VIII”, like “Cymbeline” hasn’t been seen at the Festival for 18 years. What these rarities have demonstrated is that these plays are filled with choice roles and scenes and should not suffer such neglect. “Timon”, potentially the most difficult to bring off because of its extreme cynicism, has proven the most exciting of the four because it is well cast and well directed. Flaws in casting, not flaws in the plays, have made the other three less successful. Their rarity makes all four recommendable, but let’s hope in future that strong acting in all roles, not simply the plays’ rarity, will be the main reason audiences should rush to see them.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a <i>Stage Door</i> exclusive.
Photo: Sara Topham, Walter Borden, Graham Abbey and Seana McKenna. ©2004 Stratford Festival.
<b>2004-09-01</b>
<b>Henry VIII</b>