Paul Bentzen photos. Top: Matt Schwader (center, red) with (from left) Jim Ridge, Steve Wojtas, Tim Gittings, Catherine Lynn Davis, Jonathan Smoots and Paul Bentzen. Bottom: Schwader and Carrie A. Coon.
Let’s hear it for the boys. There’s more chest-thumping testosterone in Henry V than in many a sperm bank. Directed by James Bohnen at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, the adventures of the newly crowned Harry of England are rich with riotous action and soaring idealism. Watch this band of brothers throw down against the foppish French and you might start hollering like it were overtime in a Bears/Packers Superbowl battle.
English 101 insists that Henry V is a history play. Nonesense. The dates, names and places of Harry of England’s 1413 invasion of France are just the tip of its bloody sword. Yet far too often, Henry V is staged (or worse, simply read) as a jingoistic portrait of a 15th Century superhero, a combination savior/cheerleader sallying forth in the name of God, Country and Honor. And while the famous St. Crispin’s Day speech (“We few, we happy few…&etc.”) is indeed a stirring call to battle in defense of all three, the passage is only a single, (albeit gleaming) strand in the complex, multi-layered royal tapestry that makes up Henry Lancaster. As a leader of men, King Henry he is beyond reproach. As a man? Hal does things that are all but unforgivable. He turns from soul mate to executioner with all the ease and none of the remorse of Judas.
Which brings us to Matt Schwader, taking on one of Western Literature’s meatiest male roles. Wearing leggings-tight jeans, over-the-thigh boots and a series of intricate breastplates and doublets, Schwader looks uncannily like a young Kenneth Branagh and leaves the initial impression of shallow-Hal eye candy. The charisma remains throughout. The superficiality vanishes within moments. Schwader’s Henry has all the intricacy the role demands. .jpg)
The contradictions in Henry’s character surface immediately. The affable, smiling young man on the throne looks like he’s got nothing more serious than an afternoon jousting tournament on his mind. What he’s thinking of, however, is war. He demands a justification – any justification - to invade France. He gets two: First, the Archbishop of Canterbury offers a preposterously legalistic explanation involving arcane limbs of ancient family trees and dubiously usurped inheritances. It’s ridiculous unto comical. The laughter dries up with the arrival of a French emissary, the bearer of an insulting gift of tennis balls. The sports equipment represents an insiderish, royal joke that is actually deadly serious, a salvo intended to belittle the newly crowned King of England and let him know just who is in charge of Europe. In a heartbeat, Schwader morphs from the boyishly, jovial Homecoming King to a stone-cold killer. “Tell the pleasant Prince this mock of his hath turned his balls to gunstones,” Henry responds, and it’s with a cold-blooded intensity that makes you shiver like someone’s walking over your future grave.
This Henry is the antithesis of the Prince Hal of Henry IV. In that prequel of sorts, the future king is the classic bromance party animal, a guy’s guy who lives to booze and brawl with his cutpurse pals. That Henry famously rejects his own father in favor of the sack-happy ruffian John Falstaff. Falstaff is never on stage in Henry V, but his death play a crucial role: Fat John dies of a broken heart, abandoned by Hal, the boy he loved as a son.
In one of Henry V’s most telling scenes, Schwader’s face clouds over at the mention of Falstaff’s death.
The fleeting moment captures a mosaic of emotions. It is deeply moving, and illustrative of Schwader’s subtle mastery of the role. As for the ensemble - 10 men and two women crossing genders to play almost three dozen male and four female roles – is as strong as it is deep.
David Daniel provides comic relief as an endearingly anal retentive Welshmen whose hand gestures indicate a high-functioning OCD sufferer. Paul Bentzen is also memorable as the prissy, vainglorious French King, Charles the VI. As Charles’ heir, Paul Hurley creates an insufferably entitled brat: today, this fellow would be hanging out at Chateau Marmont with the likes of Paris Hilton.
As the Chorus, James Ridge guides the audience from English throne rooms to gore-soaked battle fields. With Shakespeare’s brief prologue, Ridge makes you yearn to enter the story. Providing transitions between times and places, he keeps you within it.
Bohnen’s stark, powerful staging strips creates a production clear of any extraneous bother. Fabio Toblini’s costumes – white-on-rice tight pants, complicated boots, architectural shirts - delineate French from English and indicate 15th Century style with a powerful, frippery-free economy. The planks of set designer Takeshi Kata’s bare stage become all the locales of Henry’s world.
As for the infamous Battle of Agincourt, Bohnen orchestrates it as the primal outcry of a warrior horde, fear and bravery howling together and foretelling vast carnage. And when the Chorus finishes by alluding to the sad, bloody rule of Henry VI, the tragic cycles of history seep to the surface of Henry V’s brief, shining reign.
Henry V continues through Oct. 2 at American Players Theatre, Spring Green, Wisconsin. Tickets are $38 to $62. For more information, click here (http://playinthewoods.org), or call 608/508-2361.
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