As the Old Globe joins the pantheon of American theater companies that have staged all of Shakespeare’s plays, director and Artistic Director Barry Edelstein has gone big and broad for a play that draws its tragic force from the fact that it is not a tragedy, but a history.
Very big: the three parts of Henry 6 are here presented in two parts — named Flowers of France and Riot and Reckoning,though there is plenty of reckoning in part one and plenty of flowers in part two — totaling nearly six hours of love and war, triumph and treachery, and the endless struggle for power. The moment Henry V dies, leaving his infant son as king, France revolts against English rule and various factions begin eyeing Henry’s crown. The cast is not so large that it can afford to cast a new actor for each role — Cassia Thompson spends the first part as France’s Joan of Arc and the second as Henry’s son Prince Edward, while Tally Sessions goes from the sublime (the heroic Lord Talbot) to the ridiculous (the villainous Jack Cade, dressed as the January 6 shaman, and slain by a doddering champion of the Good Old Days), etc. etc. — but it’s still big enough for battles full of bodies and an enlarged sense of sweep and scope. (The cast list notes that “other people of England and France are played by community volunteers who participated in our arts engagement programs.”)
And very broad: Richard Plantagenet lays out his claim to the crown via a highly anachronistic slideshow that makes the goofiest plays-on-names imaginable. Hey, John of Gaunt is scary skinny! (Flowers is otherwise set in olden days, while Riot features modern riot gear but keeps the swordplay.) The wailing ghosts of late-period Jessica Lange and middle-period Meryl Streep haunt a couple of the characterizations, and there is enough skitty slapstick amid the drama and death that you may feel you are watching even more plays than you actually are.
The biggest trouble is Henry himself, who seems a great callow hollow at the center of Flowers, and shows himself clear only in his last two Riot and Reckoning soliloquies. Without a compelling character to embody the loves and hates of the state, it can be hard to care about all the goings on, no matter how oomphy the electric guitar or how dazzling the digital diplays. But again, the tragedy here is that there is no tragic hero. The good are ground under right alongside the wretched, and that — high and low, silly and solemn — is just the way it was, and is. The whole thing does, to borrow from Hopkins, gather to a greatness, or at least a grandness, and gains momentum as it rolls along. All that fury to rule France. All that English blood spilled for England.
Admission/Cost: $29 - $118
Location:
Old Globe
Balboa Park
San Diego, CA
Dates and times:
From June 30 to September 14, 2023
See Old Globe Calendar for dates and times.
