Theatrics, not blood and gore,
at the heart of Henry V drama
By Jennifer Pencek
In the search for power and glory, casualties are often left in the wake. It can be argued William Shakespeare was a master of such stories, his play Henry V being no different.
But for those attending The Acting Company and Guthrie Theater co-production of Henry V at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, in Eisenhower Auditorium, don’t expect to see blood spewing from mud-covered soldiers as they battle in endless scenes of sword fights and death. Save that for the imagination.
Instead, Director Davis McCallum and his creative team have taken the traditional story of Henry V and translated it to the stage with a focus on theatrics, not gore.
“One of the things I’ve learned about directing plays is you kind of look at a given project and ask yourself what are the givens with that project and how to make those givens as much an advantage to the production as they can possibly be,” says McCallum, speaking by phone from his New York City home.
“With this particular production,” he says, “we knew we had a total of twelve actors to tell the story of Shakespeare’s Henry V, which I think has something like fifty-five characters. So quite quickly I thought of a way to conceive the play as kind of a chorus play with one terrific actor [Matthew Amendt] playing King Henry and eleven other amazing actors as a kind of shape-shifting chorus around him who could play everything else. … The rest of them act as a chorus around him, almost as if the play has two characters in a metaphysical sense—a leader and a group of followers. So that was the first decision that we took, and we designed the sets and the costumes in order to support that decision.”
Young, restless, and ambitious, Henry V inherits a troubled crown and seeks to secure his position at home by invading France. The charismatic warrior king’s aggressive pursuit of the French crown earns him iconic status, uniting England and France and briefly banishing the civil strife that will long outlive him. Balancing heroics with the painful and complex reactions of men unsure of the justice of their cause, Henry V is a story of the power of courage and the price of glory. For more about the play’s plot, read the synopsis.
McCallum and his team had to decide if the play would be about war, he says, especially since people may immediately think of the Battle of Agincourt, which took place in October 1415 in a farmer’s field in northern France, and assume Henry V is a war play.
“When I went back and re-read the play, you kind of have a hard time finding out the scenes that are really the battle scenes,” he says. “It always seems like the battle is off stage, next door, nearby. And once I discovered that, I felt liberated not to have to bring on the mud and the blood and all the kind of other trappings of a war play and that the play could exist on more of a theatrical level. We could rely on the audience’s imagination to supply all of those things that we weren’t going to actually bring.”
In place of visual violence is a core group of actors and designers backed by two of America’s great theatrical organizations.
The Acting Company has performed 131 productions and toured to forty-eight states and ten countries. Since its creation in 1972 by actor John Houseman and Margot Harley, The Acting Company has helped launch the careers of performers including Kevin Kline, Patti LuPone, Frances Conroy, and Rainn Wilson of NBC's The Office.
The Minneapolis-based Guthrie Theater, where the tour of Henry V premiered in January 2009, was founded by renowned English director Sir Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 and is regarded as one of the country’s leading regional theatres. It’s also recognized as a center for theatre performance, production, and professional training.
On the creative end of Henry V are Neil Patel (set design) and Anita Yavich (costume design), both of whom, McCallum says, bring modernity and practicality to the production without sacrificing the story.
“Neil Patel has designed a very simple, beautiful set that takes a modern approach to Shakespeare’s description of the space as a wooden O,” McCallum says. “It’s almost like if you took a cross section of a water tower or a grain silo. It’s a big, curved, two-level back wall, and it has lots of surprising entrances and exits and sliding doors and hidden doors and windows that actors pop in and out of that gives the play a real physical drive.”
Costumes were a particular challenge. “We knew given the number of costume changes and the amount of money that we had to spend on the costumes that a realistic approach to one costume for each character in the play would never be possible,” McCallum says. “It would slow the play down too much, and we wouldn’t have enough money to do all those costumes well. So instead, [Yavich] designed this ingenious line of clothes that can come apart with zippers and Velcro and different snaps and buttons so that one outfit gets transformed in a very surprising and theatrical way to allow the character to become different characters and switch back and forth from English to French. The story is extremely clear. It’s not confusing who’s who, I hope, and the play never has to wait for a costume change, which is a great advantage to it.”
But where would a play be without its actors? Andy Grotelueschen portrays five characters—Ely, Bardolph, Orleans, Bates, and York.
“When I play multiple roles, my approach is the same for all of them,” says Grotelueschen, speaking from a tour bus on the road in New Mexico. “You sort of figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, what their roles are in this play. In addition to that, you also have to realize the audience is going to be seeing you in the other roles, so you need to also differentiate them that way. We don’t have extensive costume changes, so you change your vocality, change your physicality, just help to tell that story. But that’s really all the characterizations are about is sort of facilitating the story because that’s paramount to a production—the story and the language.”
Among the stops on the Henry V tour have been communities big and small. Performing in front of such different audiences has posed challenges, Grotelueschen says.
“Sometimes we’re in cities, and sometimes we’re in much smaller communities, and the level of familiarity with Shakespeare isn’t the same everywhere. So we do the same show everywhere we go, but the audience brings their own Shakespeare baggage, even their own experience with Shakespeare to the show, too,” the actor says. “It’s a very funny show, so listening to how the comedy plays in different places can be very strange because sometimes the audience is right there, and they’re understanding all of the language. As performers we just have to be really sensitive to what an audience is getting and what they’re not and playing with that dynamic to make sure that they’re getting the story and hearing the language.”
McCallum has also noticed challenges, but he says the production value speaks for itself.
“The play is 400 years old and I think was written for an audience that would have known more about English royal and military history than audiences know today,” he says. “The play starts with the big speech about Salic law, and it’s a challenge to make that speech work in 2009. … Even if we don’t know anything about King Henry V’s actual life, the characterizations are so deeply embedded in the language that I feel like we know people like them even today. It doesn’t feel distanced or kind of musty or set in amber in an oldie-timey way. The people kind of leap off the page. We’ve tried to serve the history play aspect of it but also to transcend it.”
Audio description, which is especially helpful to patrons with sight loss, is available for this performance at no extra charge to ticket holders.
Artistic Viewpoints, an informal moderated discussion featuring a visiting artist or local expert, is offered in Eisenhower Auditorium one hour before the performance and is free for ticket holders. Artistic Viewpoints regularly fills to capacity. Seating is available on a first-arrival basis.
The Acting Company
Guthrie Theater
Production of Henry V
7:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 21
Eisenhower Auditorium
Adult $32
University Park Student $10
18 and Younger $26
sponsors
Gay D. Dunne, M.D., and James H. Dunne. M.D.
This tour engagement of The Acting Company is funded through Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Mid Atlantic Tours program in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program.
Henry V synopsis
William Shakespeare’s bold saga follows the charismatic warrior King Henry V and his band of men through the brutality of war as they confront heavy opposition and face their own destinies in an aggressive pursuit for the French crown. Each act is introduced by a chorus setting the scene for the action to follow.
Act I
The Bishop of Eli and the Archbishop of Canterbury attempt to convince Henry to invade France and claim his rightful crown. While Canterbury pleads his case, French ambassadors arrive and present Henry with a gift belittling his ability to rule. Furious, he readies his forces for invasion. As preparations are made, we meet Henry’s rowdy long-ago friends who join his forces bound for France.
Act II
It is the eve of the Battle of Agincourt—perhaps the most famous battle between these two nations—with the English forces woefully outnumbered. In disguise, Henry moves through his troops to assess their spirits. Their fears and the overwhelming odds weigh heavily on Henry, who prays for victory and rouses the troops with his famous St. Crispin’s Day speech.
Victory in hand, Henry attempts to woo a French princess for his queen. Stymied by their different languages, the crowns of England and France are, however awkwardly, joined, and an era of peace begins.
