Henry V

Bard on the Beach until August 13, 2023
Tickets from $30 at 604-739-0559 or www.bardonthebeach.org

Posted July 8, 2023

The first two shows that opened Bard on the Beach’s 2023 season – As You Like it and Julius Caesar – have a couple of advantages over the recently opened Henry V, directed and adapted by Lois Anderson. Both have fairly clearly defined plots and both are plays that audiences are familiar with so the language isn’t really a problem. “Friends, Romans, countrymen” – we all know the words that come next. And, in As You Like It, adaptor/director Daryl Cloran infuses the show with almost two dozen Beatles songs that we know and love. And it’s funny. It helps, too, that both of those productions feature seasoned actors who can deliver Elizabethan English as if it were the language of today.

Henry V, on the other hand, is less familiar and is less plot-driven than character-based: while it revolves around war between England and France it’s really about the making of a king. Will he grow up from the 15 or 16-year-old boy, who has just ascended the English throne, to be able to maintain his country’s sovereignty over France? What will be the personal cost to Henry (also referred to as Hal) as he evolves into his kingly role?

And then the play piffles out in a marriage that feels like an afterthought. A wedding. Dancing, etcetera. An addenda at best.

As a play, Henry V is a tough sell.

But Anderson, working with set designer Amir Ofek, has a vision that involves bringing the audience into the play, not so much in an interactive way but by setting a mood, an atmosphere, that informs the play. In a recent CBC interview with Ofek, he described sourcing 400 used burlap coffee sacks and stitching them together to create a 600 square foot shabby, tent-within-a-tent. The world outside this tent seems to disappear and, entering through a huge interlaced stack of old wooden chairs, we enter this world that feels chaotic, war-torn. This is the world young Hal inherits from his father, Henry IV.

Director Anderson frames the story as a play-within-a-play inside this tent-within-a-tent. A ragtag bunch of players arrives in the middle of a thunderstorm to present an open-air production of Shakespeare’s Henry V. The time and place are indeterminate but it feels like a war zone; the players race for cover from the downpour, pulling hoods up over their heads and trying to find shelter. Thunder – or is it the sound of exploding bombs – fills the air.  The chorus/narrator (Emilie Leclerc) – a kind of wizard-like character in a tall straw top hat – sets the play in motion. She explains what’s going on – and that’s a good thing because we are already a little lost between Shakespeare’s text and Anderson’s adaption. Flashbacks end with Leclerc intoning, “the memory fades” so we know we are back in real time.

Joelysa Pankanea provides music and song with choreography by Jonathan Hawley Purvis (also the fight director). These scenes tend to provide respite from what is otherwise a bit confusing but the scenes that are supposed to be amusing – especially the English lesson – are drawn out and not terribly successful.

The cast includes Kate Besworth, Craig Erickson, Marlee Griffiths, Karthik Kadam, Billy Marchenski, Tom Pickett, Munish Sharma and the always engaging Advah Soudack as  the sprightly Mistress Quickly.

There are some stunning visuals in this production including a scene with small white origami boats held aloft by the characters as the English troops sail across the channel to France. Wooden chairs function as canons in the Battle of Agincourt with red flashes, explosions and bodies piling up. The stars of this Henry V are clearly the technical and design teams, including lighting designer Sophie Tang and costume designer Mara Gottler whose timeless costumes are both ancient and modern. Think layers and layers of grey, brown and black.  Multi-casting requires quick costume changes all of which are done on stage: a cap here, a cape there, a chunk of wood for a sword.

Anderson casts young Kate Besworth as Henry V and, while that is a risky choice, Besworth is appropriate for Anderson’s vision: a young, bewildered lad barely out of short pants who finds himself crowned and being manipulated by various courtiers. Right to the end Besworth, as Hal, maintains  a youthful optimism, a naivete, a boyishness, a belief that love conquers all. But that, I think, is Anderson’s perspective, not Shakespeare’s.

What gets short shrift is the sense that Henry, through war and making hard decisions, including abandoning Falstaff and executing another of his childhood friends , matures – for better or worse – to take the reins and rule England and France, quite ruthlessly as history tells us.  At the end of this production, however, Henry still feels like a little boy about to marry a princess. The king has gone through hell but does not seem to have grown up.

In the director’s notes Anderson states her position: “At this point in my life, it’s hard to believe that peace is possible – at least on a global scale. But I do believe in acts of Love.” In the midst of the pandemic, its aftermath and the ongoing raging war in Ukraine and elsewhere, there are small and large acts of kindness. This production is a Henry V through a very particular lens, Anderson’s lens, and that is a director’s prerogative. We might not agree with the choices she made; we might not like them.

Shakespeare’s Henry V is about what it takes to be a king. The cost. The heartache. The sacrifice. The betrayals. I think it is a much darker play than what we see here and what we see at the end is not love – or Love – but an expedient union of warring nations through marriage. Nothing much to celebrate in that.