Last night I got to see
Henry V (Shakespeare) at MIT, one of the historicals I'd not seen before*. It covers Henry's glorious battle of Agincourt, basically, with all that lead up to it and the results thereof.
This was an interesting production. The set was fairly bare, just a couple of steps at the back, the whole floor covered in a giant map of England (including Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall) and France, with room for Ireland off by the side. Important cities were marked, making it easy to get a handle on the geography. It worked very well. The other decision I thought worked nicely was the choice to have a bit of a Falstaff and Prince Hal scene from one of the
Henry IV plays as a sort of introduction. It didn't show Hal's wild youth so much as show the bad company he was in, and it made Falstaff's death much more relevant.
Other things worked less well, particularly the hum of the sound system (or the lights?) being very loud, but inconstantly so; I found it extremely difficult to block out. It's a student production, so the acting was quite variable. Happily, the one playing Hal was excellent, as were some of the other major characters. The weak spots were noticeably weaker than other college theater I've been to recently, however.
As for the play, it's mixed. I'm really not used to Shakespeare having such a large role for the Chorus, having a lot of expository bits filling in parts of the story rather than just showing it. That felt of a piece with the long speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury about Salic Law and other laws of inheritance which seemed quite abstruse. On the other hand, the main story was interesting. The comedic relief was less so, except for the leek-beating (which seemed so appropriate for just-before-Pesach, given a Sefardi custom of beating with scallions at the seder**) scene. Perhaps I would've cared more about the low-brow characters had I seen the other plays they're in before this.
As written,
Henry is the uber-king, thoughtful, humble, appreciative, yet still royal. He got all his dissolution out of the way as a youth (as shown in the two parts of
Henry IV), turning into the perfect paragon of a royal. A little too perfect, but what excellent speeches! I wish we could have political leadership as good. Of course, it's impossible to know what the view from 200 years in the future will be (nor whether they'll write songs*** about our war, though I have to say I doubt it.), but I suspect in any case now will not be viewed as the zenith of anything in American history. Nadir, perhaps...
*
Leaving 14 Shakespeare plays I haven't seen, most of them histories.**
( scallionate custom )***
Agincourt Carol is a song about the battle (not a camp follower :-).![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}