All photos: Royal Shakespeare Company
Compared to the other history plays, the three parts of Henry VI don't get very much respect. They are rarely performed in their entirety, if at all, and the historical period portrayed--the Wars of the Roses--is the kind of complex, obscure and apparently pointless era in time that drives most undergraduates screaming from the study of British History. The chance to see them performed by the RSC is what drew me to Stratford, however. I did my homework before going: I watched the BBC DVD productions (now not easily available in individual plays, unfortunately, but can be rented at Netflix) and read Alison Weir's entertaining history of the Wars of the Roses. Of course I read the plays themselves; these are some of Shakespeare's earliest works and come across as stiff and stagy on the page, but I was soon to discover the vitality of their story in the RSC's live performances.
Once again, the RSC's ensemble actors bring energy and cohesiveness to the three plays. I saw them performed in order in a single day--a marathon Saturday which began at 10:30am and ended at 11:00pm. It was a strenuous day for the audience; the actors must have been in a state of collapse by the end. During the plays, however, they never missed a beat, and if the pace of the plays occasionally lagged for a moment or two, it always recovered with a timely interjection of humor. Here are some of the high points from each play.
Henry VI, Part One
Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself
Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought...
Clive Wood returns as Richard of York, who will challenge the young King Henry VI (ably played by Chuk Iweji) for the crown. All of Wood's performances were high points throughout the Histories Cycle: his penetrating voice, burly physical presence, and sheer on-stage charisma proved intoxicating. It can't be easy to play two usurpers, but Wood brings a seasoned actor's study of character to York. Whereas his Bolingbroke is reserved, his York conspires verbally with the audience. Bolingbroke is fundamentally well-intentioned, achieving the crown by chance; York is an ambitious schemer. Wood is such an accomplished performer that his merest gesture commanded the audience's attention. By Part Three, when York is murdered by Margaret of Anjou and his head impaled on a stick on the walls of the city, the Clive-Wood spell was so dominant that I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from his face, propped up on the edge of the upper stage, presumably dead as a doornail--but charmismatically so.
Geoffrey Streatfeild is back as the Duke of Suffolk, who schemes to bring Margaret of Anjou to England as King Henry's bride. Streatfeild plays Suffolk as a posturing schemer, his self-serving nature balanced by a good dose of broad humor: "Fond man, remember that thou hast a wife," says Suffolk as he lusts after Margaret himself, prompting a titter across the stalls in the theater.
Katy Stephens is a captivating Joan of Arc. The role here is extremely athletic and Stephens handles her longsword fight scenes as ably as the rest of the French soldiers. In a clever use of Shakespearean "doubling"--using one actor to play two roles, often lending depth to each other in parallels of situation and character--Stephens turns from Joan of Arc into Margaret of Anjou by the end of the play, a transformation permitted less than a minute in stage time. After being lowered into a fire pit when Joan is executed, Stephens almost immediately reappears as Margaret, still perspiring from recent immolation.
Henry VI, Part Two
Thus sometimes hath the brightest day a cloud;
And after summer evermore succeeds
Barren winter with his wrathful nipping cold:
So cares and joys abound, as seasons fleet.
Part Two covers a lot of ground. Major plot points include the downfall and murder of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, the mounting tension between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions, the Jack Cade rebellion, and finally the battle of Saint Albans, at which York and his sons are victorious. On the page, this relentless forward movement is difficult to follow; on stage it runs the risk of becoming tedious.
I confess, by Act Four I was feeling the rigors of Extreme Playgoing. It was mid-afternoon and I had been in the theater for almost six hours. After the murder of Suffolk by pirates in Scene One, I didn't think I could endure the Cade rebellion. My mind was wandering to thoughts of escape, when the lights rose on the stage and two goofy figures danced around with a headless mannequin (in a nod to the beheading that just occurred to poor Suffolk). One was Jonathan Slinger, the other Forbes Masson. They treated us to a bit of impromptu slapstick. Slinger marched into the audience and dragged a poor playgoer onto the stage, handed him a prop sword, and told him to behead yet another victim. "Go on, we've been doin' this for two days," he said. Fortunately for the victim, Slinger ultimately took the sword away and turned his attention to the playgoer's backpack, which he emptied onto the stage. A book and a wallet were among the items that caught his eye. He picked up the book and looked at it for a good moment.
"Richard Three," he said dismissively, reading the title.
"I hear it's SHIT," responded Masson, who was rifling through the wallet. He brought out a ten-pound note. "Oooooooooh," he said, showing the bill to the audience. He marched up to the front of the stage and handed the money to a woman in the front row. "Go buy yourself sumpin' nice, darling."
Laughter shook the building. The lassitude of late afternoon was gone. The martyred playgoer was led back to his seat and Slinger and Masson were joined by the bloodied, beheaded, and bandaged actors who played characters already killed during Part One and Part Two. These became Jack Cade's mob, and we were back to the play again, newly attentive thanks to a brilliant example of theatrical pacing.
Henry VI, Part Three
Part Three brings the death of Richard of York, the eventual Yorkist ascendancy in his son, Edward IV, and the evolution of the character of his youngest son, Richard, who will later become Richard III. The action of this play is unrelenting, but it is the psychological momentum of the play that endures in my memory. In no small part is this endurance due to the strong performances by the ensemble actors.
Katy Stephens is remarkable as Margaret of Anjou, a shamefully under-recognized female role in Shakespeare's works. Margaret begins in Part One as a young girl and evolves in Part Two into a political player who tries to light a fire under her placid husband, Henry. In Part Three, her ambition boils into pure fury at the murder of her son, Ned, before her very eyes. Hereafter, Margaret will become a figure of revenge, a reminder of past wrongs and the perils of ambition. Stephens plays this transformation admirably. Her young Margaret has moments of softness and humor, and her passion for Suffolk at the beginning of Part Two is genuine. Later, when Ned is murdered, her cry of "Kill me, too!" chilled me to the bone. In Margaret, the Histories have a truly substantive female role, and Stephens occupies it mastefully.
Everyone who admires Richard III must read Henry VI, Part Three, for the corrupt and charming character of Richard is first established in the earlier play. In Part Three, Richard of Gloucester is at first a noble, courageous and intelligent character. He fights bravely for his father, argues fluently in favor of further Yorkist action to obtain the crown, and earns honor in battle, despite his physical disabilities. Only after his request to receive the dukedom of Clarence rather than Gloucester is dismissed do his discontented, self-serving and deceptive qualities emerge.
Then, since the heavens have shaped my body so,
Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.
I had no father, I am like no father;
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word 'love,' which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.
Jonathan Slinger is an actor of enormous depth, as I have said earlier. His Richard of Gloucester is truly good and noble, then becomes truly evil. Rather than being purely black-and-white, this character change is every shade of grey in Slinger's performance. He delivers Richard's soliloquy, quoted above, in a rage which stems as much from grief as it does in anger. In a nod to his earlier portrayal of Richard II, Slinger pulls a hairpiece from his shaven head at the end of this scene, revealing a large port-wine stain on Richard of Gloucester's head. This deformity, more than the hyperflexed arm and club-foot that Slinger mimics so well, marks the blot on Richard's character which will culminate in his tragic end in the final play of the cycle: Richard III.
