Review: HENRY 6 at Old Globe Theatre

It’s the political season, so the time has come to choose a side. Red rose or white. York or Lancaster? Sommerset or Plantagenet? Pure secession line or charismatic usurper? The will of God or the sword of man? All, some or none of the above? Don’t worry…you can change your position midstream. After all, that’s what the English of old did!

Oh, there are plenty of opportunities to draw allegiances and so very many noble and ignoble people to help guide the selection. We’ve got some old friends and some others who we know from a different context. And in Barry Edelstein, we’ve got an adaptor/director who is guiding these proceedings with a rock and roll brio that makes this two-part adaption of Shakespeare’s HENRY 6 plays perhaps the culmination (his word) of his 12 years at the helm of The Old Globe Theatre, one of the nation’s leading Shakespeare-producing institutions.

That’s right, no keyboard slip on which Hank we’re talking about. All hale HENRY 6, a play written early in Shakespeare’s career, which he followed with two sequels. Covering the War of the Roses and the men and women of England who come between Hal and Falstaff, and Richard III, the three HENRY 6 plays are rarely staged anywhere, individually or together. With the production of his new adaptation for San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, Edelstein – also the company’s Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director – and the Globe have now staged every play in Shakespeare’s canon.

The significance of this milestone has in no way been lost by Edelstein who has turned the event into a community-embracing celebration. Different technical elements were brought out into the community, incorporating San Diegans into everything from prop creation to projections to walk-on roles. Patrons who arrive in the courtyard can take selfies near the throne or add a red or white rose to an enormous crown.

Laying aside the ceremony and pageantry that the Globe has built around that event, the production is big, brash, often overreaching, occasionally pandering and utterly arresting through its nearly six hours (over two evenings) of stage time. We see those red and white roses, as pins and sashes, adorning David Israel Reynoso’s largely contemporary costumes. Caite Hevner’s projections bring capabilities not previously realized to the Globe’s outdoor festival stage. Audiences will experience battles, political machinations, and endless scheming for a crown that – let’s face it - nobody should even want. On the production side, there’s oodles of video, sword play, witches and spirits, even a rabble rouser who isa  dead ringer for the QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley. In addition to community members who were filmed as part of the crowd scenes, the production features 30 actors. There is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of players to tread it.  

Sometimes they help you. Midway through part 1 FLOWERS AND FRANCE, there is even a PowerPoint presentation replete with pictures and puns. Who gives this presentation? Why, Richard Plantagenet, later the Duke of York, played by William DeMeritt as he explains his justification of why he – and not the enthroned son of King Henry 5 who was crowned as an infant – should be the rightful ruler of England. Understand, that this York’s a serious dude who means business about capturing the throne at any cost. The PowerPoint presentation is decidedly whacked out, but it fits the past-is-present, everything goes spirit of this endeavor.

In this case, York is offering up his case not just to us but to the Earl of Salisbury (Victor Morris) and his son, the Earl of Warwick (Sofia Jean Gomez), both of whom will feature prominently in the downfall of our current King Henry.  As the action plays out, multiple people take us into their confidence to share their ambitions, often in verse.  As previously noted, lots and lots of people in the Henry 6-iverse are looking to advance themselves or their progeny. Given the sheer number of characters in this saga and the cast doubling, it can be challenging to keep up with who is who. Consulting a synopsis and a who’s who will be rewarding. And fortunately, Edelstein’s decades of experience in Shakespeare’s work is especially evident when his characters speak – vets, students, and Tony Award nominees alike - they handle the dialogue intelligently and with meaning. With their help – along with the occasional PowerPoint - we can follow the plot.

Some of the peripheral characters don’t have much to do with the machinations over the throne of England. In the early part of Part 1, for example, we meet Joan La Pucelle (AKA, the Maid of Orleans, AKA Joan of Arc), a burr in the saddle of the English’s effort to keep its power of France. Joan’s a warrior, the equal of any man, who also consorts with spirits and scares the piss out of anyone who takes her on. In her battle regalia, Cassia Thompson cuts an impressive figure, as eloquent as she is ferocious. As history has recorded, Joan’s ending is not a pleasant one, and some of Shakespeare’s more craven lines for her have been removed in this version.

Joan’s foil and nemesis, Lord Talbot (Tally Sessions) is a heroic battle machine, a none too political Lancaster who becomes a casualty to the indecisiveness of York and Sommerset. The most consistently (and uncomplicatedly) heroic character through the entire saga, Talbot drives much of the action of part 1. Swaggering and seductive when he needs to be, Sessions makes Talbot a pilar of honor, a character who is ultimately too good to live. The actor reappears in Part Two RIOT AND RECKONING barely recognizable, and having a high old time as the ringleader Jack Cade, heading up a doomed uprising of working people. That oft-quoted line, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” is uttered here.

Occurring early in Part 2, the Cade rebellion scenes with its MAGA flags and the direct evocations of January 6 feel like they are – to borrow a phrase from a very different play - laid on with a trowel in a big way. Overall, Part 2 contains more action, including a fairly substantial body count, to say nothing of torture, betrayal and plenty of high dudgeon. It’s the less nuanced and therefore less interesting of the two evenings, the one in which players of the characters default to turning their characters into caricatures. It’s here that we meet Richard, son of York, later Duke of Gloucester and – down the line – our favorite crippled monster, Richard III. Gregg Mozgala takes this individual from devoted, vengeful son to scheming fiend. Mozgala frequently has the character on all fours, scuttling around lizard-like and braying like a wolf.

Richard’s not even the darkest character. That honor goes to Margaret, daughter of the King Naples, an attractive but not especially high-born French woman whom the scheming of Duke of Suffolk (Mozgala again) positions into a political marriage with King Henry 6 because he has his own ambitions and wants to bed Margaret himself. Smart choice. As ferocious a political animal as the War of the Roses contains. Margaret is everything her pigeon-livered husband is not. Elizabeth A. Davis cannily presents a woman who has no intention of being a pawn in anybody game of thrones. In Davis’s hands, Margaret’s love of Suffolk is deep and genuine; her determination to not see her son passed over bear-like. There are a ton of men in these plays, but between Joan, the Duchess of Gloucester and briefly the Countess of Auvergne, Shakespeare also wrote some meaty female characters. Margaret is the most lethal.

Her King, the play’s title character, is himself a complicated man who probably would never have chosen to be the guy at the top, but who – once in position - will do what he has to do in order to remain there. The actor Keshav Moodliar is gangly and fine-featured. We meet him ostensibly as a petulant teen-ager draping himself across the throne, whining petulantly at his Uncle Gloucester, the Lord Protector (Ian Lassiter) whenever the bickering lords aren’t playing nice. The more contentious things get, the less equipped this king is lead and the more cerebral Moodliar’s performance becomes. If Henry’s defining attribute is his unfitness to serve, Moodliar brings out the weakness without making him an out and out coward.

So characters with plenty of depth, action and arresting visuals. With HENRY 6, The Old Globe completes Shakespeare’s canon not just with a bang but with a banquet.  

HENRY 6 ONE: FLOWERS AND RANKCE plays through September 14. Part TWO: RIOT AND RECKONING plays through September 15 at The Old Globe Theatre in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Photo of Mike Sears, Ian Lassiter, Elizabeth A. Davis, Keshav Moodliar and Victor Morris as Salisbury by Rich Soublet II.

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