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by William Shakespeare, directed by Richard Monette

Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford

May 31-September 24, 2006

“So pester’d with a popinjay”

Except for “Richard III”, Stratford has so long shown an aversion to Shakespeare’s history plays that it is surprising to see “Henry IV, Part 1” on the playbill just five years after it was last presented and in tandem with “Part 2”.  One might think that a revival so soon might mean director Richard Monette has a new take on the play--and he does.  But, unfortunately, it’s one that makes a shambles of the play’s structure and meaning.

The action shifts among three groups--the court ruled by Henry IV, who privately wishes to atone for having seized the crown from Richard II; the world of the rebels who challenge Henry’s right to rule; and the underworld of the tavern presided over by that “great Satan”, comic though he is, Falstaff.  This third world of whores, drunkards and thieves in Eastcheap is where Henry’s son and heir, Prince Hal, spends his time to the great consternation of his father.      

What Monette does is to play up the comedy in this complex play at the expense of everything else.  The world of the tavern is comic but there should be an unpleasant undercurrent since, as Prince Hal reveals in his famous soliloquy “I know you all” in Act 1, he is merely using them for his own advantage and plans to discard them all, including Falstaff, when the time is right.  From the very first moments of this production when Monette shows us James Blendick’s Falstaff struggling to get up off the floor because of his weight, we know that any hope for subtlety is gone.  Monette has Bardolph, Peto and Gadshill (Barry MacGregor, Tim MacDonald and Keith Dinicol) played as interchangeable imbeciles.  In the important role-playing scene in Act 2, when Falstaff pleads “Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world” and that Hal uses as an excuse to tell him to his face that he will cast him off, David Snelgrove throws Hal’s chilling words “I do, I will” away and we get no reaction from Blendick as Falstaff to see their effect.

What is worse, however, is Monette’s attempt to make the rebels equally comic.  In his programme notes Monette calls Hotspur, Prince Hal’s main rival, a “hothead and a bit of a meathead”.  And that, unfortunately, is just what we get.  Monette has Adam O’Byrne rush through Hotspur’s speeches in the upper register of his voice frequently breaking into comic falsetto at the height of anger.  This approach turns a noble warrior, “A son who is the theme of honour’s tongue,” into a raving geek, more of a Sir Andrew Aguecheek than a serious rival.  This ruins the structure of the whole play.  Sons seem to have been born to the wrong fathers.  King Henry states outright that he wishes Hotspur were his son rather than Hal.  Hotspur indeed deserves a father more like Henry than his own, who feigns illness so as not to have to go to battle.  And Hal’s father-surrogate is clearly the aged Falstaff, who hopes to rise by association with the heir to the throne.  Henry and Hal may finally come to terms by the end, but that reconciliation is balanced with the tragedy that awaits Hotspur in Part 1 and Falstaff in Part 2.  To have Hotspur played as a fool ruins both the parallelism between him and Hal and the pathos that should attend his death and Hal’s meditation on it.

In this large cast there are only a handful of passable performances.  Blendick, of course, can always be depended on as a good Falstaff, even under poor direction, but there is noticeably less detail to his characterization here than there was under Bernard Hopkins in “The Merry Wives of Windsor” in 1990.  Scott Wentworth, who directed both parts of “Henry IV” in 2001, recites his lines gravely but never seems fully engaged with the role.  Domini Blythe is a pleasant Mistress Quickly but seems far too refined for the low-class establishment where she is employed.  The one actor other than Blendick who truly commands the stage is Raymond O’Neill as the Welsh rebel and wizard Owen Glendower.  He seems so imbued with real power rather than the usual hot air, that, for a change Hotspur’s jokes about his mystical origins fall flat.

As for the rest of the performances, I can honestly say that I have seen school plays better acted.  As Prince Hal, David Snelgrove says all his lines but says them all exactly the same way as if he had no idea what they meant.  Lawrence Haegert as Hal’s friend Poins does just the same.  Adam O’Byrne’s Hotspur is so embarrassingly bad I at first thought it was the actor’s fault.  However, after seeing him give such an assured and nuanced performance as Charles Courtly in “London Assurance” under Brian Bedford, it became clear that Monette’s faulty direction was to blame.  Roger Shank’s Scottish accent as the fierce Earl of Douglas was so overdone it was unintentionally comic.  Jennifer Mawhinney as Lady Percy and Laura Condlln as Lady Mortimer did nothing with their roles.  And the fine comedy Barry MacGregor, Tim MacDonald and Keith Dinicol are capable of goes completely untapped.

Monette says in his director’s notes: “I’ve seen ‘Henry IV’ played very darkly and cynically.  But by doing this, you make the implicit in the play explicit: then there’s no depth, no subtext”.  You would think a director of Monette’s experience would not allow a statement of such folly to appear in print.  Monette seems to think that by dealing only with the surface of a play the depth will come out on its own.  Sad to say, but that never happens.  Only if the depths of the play are clear in every moment do we get the interplay of surface and depth that gives a work its richness.  Monette’s stated philosophy leads only to superficiality.  And this emotionally and intellectually impoverished “Henry IV” is its result.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: James Blendick, David Snelgrove and Scott Wentworth. ©David Hou.