Few theaters dare to tackle the early history plays of William Shakespeare, and for good reason. The Bard was just getting his feet wet as a playwright when he wrote the three-part Henry VI and, scholars generally agree, he collaborated with contemporaries like Thomas Nashe and Christopher Marlowe, while working out just how to dramatize episodes from less than a century in the past. These are weaker plays, Part 1 especially, with a lot of characters (with confusingly overlapping names), dense plotting, and a notable lack of finesse in writing, structure, and pace. It’s also a challenge to build and maintain interest for modern audiences, especially Americans less familiar with the Hundred Years War or the subsequent internecine War of the Roses.
After a somewhat lumbering start, though, the National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) delivers a gripping and stylish new two-night production of Henry VI at the Public Theater. The first act, which tries to speed through the first play of the Bard’s trilogy, remains a bit of a slog. The show gains momentum over time, particularly on the fleet-footed second night, which combines the second half of Part 2 and the entirety of Part 3. It also plays as both a Mob drama of competing clans and a prequel to Shakespeare’s more frequently performed classic Richard III.
Director and adapter Stephen Brown-Field draws out clever parallels between the feudal periods of England and Japan with a cast of Asian descent who wield samurai poles and smaller kama-style swords for close-in combat. The fight choreography, by Orlando Pabotoy and Kimiye Corwin is athletic and genuinely thrilling. The actors all wear costumes, by the colllective threeASFOUR, that draw on multiple Asian influences, from loose Mandarin collars to structured ponchos and puffy vests that mimic suits of armor to denim and khaki canvas outfits for commoners that would not be out of place in a Tokyo streetwear collection. The poetic set, by the collective dots, uses movable wooden staircase platforms and barrier poles that recall Wing-Chun dummies on a red-lacquer stage strewn with scraps of black paper that suggest ashes or feathers as the occasion demand.
Though he bears the title of the play, Henry VI may be the most recessive of Shakespeare’s heroes. Crowned when he was 9 months old, he’s been groomed for the throne by his genial uncle, Humphrey of Lancaster (played with avuncular steadiness by NAATCO co-founder Mia Katigbak). Jon Norman Schneider plays Henry as a kind of proto-Hamlet, well-schooled and deliberative but slow to act and largely ineffectual in the midst of a court loyal neither to him nor to each other. He tries to tamp down differences between his loyalists from the House of Lancaster and rival factions gathering behind the House of York (led by Rajesh Bose’s ambitious and crafty Duke of York). But he lacks the charisma of his late father, Henry V, either on or off the battlefield. His attempts to rally his own band of brothers yield too few soldiers, and none of them happy.
After initial setbacks, many at the hands of the dynamic Joan of Arc (Myka Cue), the English ultimately vanquish the French army — only to quickly lose virtually all of the territory amid squabbles between the two factions who are eager to blame each other for the setback. The play delivers a lot of characters and plotting and reversals of fortune in a condensed timeframe — but really comes alive in the action scenes, which are lit in bold shades of white and red (by Mextly Couzin) with deaths further marked by a flourish of sound (by Kate Marvin) that suggests the slicing of a samurai sword. The stylized action, with rope-handled wooden blocks whirled around to represent decapitated heads, is compelling without being graphic. It still defies the neoclassical norms for theater, which regarded staged violence as a sop to patrons in the cheap seats and preferred battles to be recounted diegetically after the fact. But just barely.
The drama kicks into gear with the Mafia-like maneuvering of the white-rose-wearing Yorkists and the red-rose-marked Lancastrians, who are soon led not by Henry, but his French-born wife, Margaret. She initially tries to place her secret lover, the Earl of Suffolk (Paul Juhn), onto the throne but then becomes Henry’s fiercest defender both in court and on the battlefield. Teresa Avia Lim tears into the role with gusto, embracing both the cattiness of this courtly combatant as well as the physicality of a warrior-queen who, like Joan, is compared to an Amazon for her unbridled ferocity. (Perhaps it’s no accident that she was born queen of Sicily.)
Shakespeare’s gift for language — and for humor — also emerges more clearly on the second night of this production, with commoners’ calls to “kill all the lawyers” once the Yorkists seize the throne and the two sides swapping insults in court like sharp-tongued Real Housewives. Many characters get strong individual moments, as when Schneider’s Henry slides into philosophical equanimity to his fate (rather than the more traditional mental breakdown often seen in the role).
But the play also benefits by having the focus narrow from a large and diffuse cast to two big personalities both seeking control of the English monarchy: Margaret and the Duke of York’s savvy but most easily dismissed son, Richard (Julyana Soelistyo). Despite wearing a padded back on her vest and effecting a limp, Soelistyo proves a commanding presence — slyly intelligent, with a Machiavellian streak that allows the character to play along with his misguided brother-king Edward (David Shih). He knows all too well that the man is making catastrophic blunders that will soon be his undoing, and won’t lift a finger to correct his brother’s course.
Brown-Fried saves one of his most compelling bits of stagecraft for the end: Every slain character reappears, dressed in a pleated tuxedo-style shirt over black trousers, to hover around the triumphant Yorkist royal family: Edward, his queen and infant son, as well as brothers George and Richard. They represent the huge toll in human bodies of this victory — which will prove short-lived for Edward, as well as for the ruthless Richard destined to usurp him. The meek do not inherit the earth, Shakespeare is telling us. But the bold have no easier a time of it. And everybody around them pays a price. ★★★★☆
HENRY VI
Public Theater, Off Broadway
Running time: Part 1: 3 hours, 10 minutes (with one intermission); Part 2: 2 hours, 45 minutes (with one intermission)
Tickets on sale through July 19 for $89 for each show or $158 for both