performance

The Kings and I

By Gary Tischler

February 2010

Michael Hayden as King Henry V. Photo by Scott Suchman.
 
The Shakespeare Theatre Company calls its productions of “Richard II” and “Henry V,” now being performed at Sidney Harman Hall, the Leadership Repertory.
 
I call it two of the most outstanding Shakespeare productions I’ve ever encountered, period.
 
David Muse directs “Henry V” with casts whose members appear in different parts in both plays. The strong reed that holds both together, in terms of acting, is Michael Hayden, who plays both Richard and Henry.
 
So what’s the final result?
 
If you should happen to see both plays — and you should, you should — you can see the issue of the humanity of leaders and kings in action. Kahn has the more difficult task at hand, in some ways: “Richard II” is earlier, nebulous Shakespeare — it’s the poet bard blossoming fully, the playwright not quite skilled enough to flesh out an entire cast of characters.
 
Richard, by taking on and wronging the ambitious Henry Bolingbroke, a tough, pragmatic, steely man who has all the qualities of leadership except legitimacy, ends up sparking civil war, being deposed and ultimately murdered. But the more he loses in power the more he gains in humanity, eliciting some of Shakespeare’s most famous and poetic speeches of loss, mourning and final self-understanding. He cannot rule men’s hearts but he can break the heart of an audience.
 
Both plays have casts sturdied up and double-cast by STC veterans so that when you see in the opening scene Ted Van Griethuysen, Floyd King and Philip Goodwin as Richard’s uncles, you know you’re in good hands.
 
That confidences pushes over into “Henry V”, which is fully formed Shakespeare, at full throttle and voice. It’s a play overly familiar for its rousing call to battles, as Henry and his English horde invade France, but it’s also much richer than that in tone and character in a wholly imagined world.
 
And it’s done by the use of a three actors as an inviting chorus, by making the audience fellow travelers, co-conspirators, partners and witnesses. They prod us: “Imagine now, think ye that the stage is an ocean, a field, conjure up…” We become almost intimate presences ourselves, deep in the mud of Agincourt, silently standing by in the tavern where Falstaff lays dying, we are at the French court and the fields where weary, sick English soldiers get succor from a “little bit of Harry in the night.”
 
The glue in both productions is Hayden, who has an intensity, a humanity, and a gift for the language that makes him mesmerizing as he should be in both parts. Richard may be squander his power, but he is never anything less than a commanding presence. Henry, whether ferreting out traitors, bumbling with his bad French as he attempts to court the French princess, weeping over the body of an old companion he’s had to execute, or uniting his troops as “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” at Agincourt is never anything less than a grand human being, a kingly king. In this, Hayden is the king of king players.
 
Both plays run some minutes over three hours. They seem, in the mind, still not over. (Through April 10.)

A new stage for Arena

These are hectic, busy, even ebullient days for Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith.
 
These days, she’s in rehearsals for “The Light in the Piazza,” the highly original and Tony Award-winning Broadway musical which opens at Arena’s Crystal City stage on March 5.
 
The chat also came in the wake of the 2010-2011 Arena Stage Announcement, which kicks off with a production of “Oklahoma,” maybe the quintessential American musical, from Rodgers and Hammerstein on Oct. 23.
 
“The Light in the Piazza” will be the last play Smith will direct during Arena’s two-year hiatus of two-theater performances in Crystal City and at the Lincoln Theater on U Street, necessitated by the construction of the Mead Center for American Theater, Arena’s new home.
 
“It’s been busy, to say the least,” Smith said, contemplating the move to the three-theater Mead Center, which is already a difference maker in the Southwest waterfront maker where it stands. “We’re coming home after two and a half years.”
 
While the move or return is obviously on her mind, Smith is also focused strongly on “Piazza.” Ever since she came to take over the artistic director position at Arena Stage 13 years ago — another return home, since she grew up in the Washington suburbs — Smith has honed the focus of the Tony-Award winning, nationally respected regional theater on American plays, American playwrights, and, yes, American musicals, an often under-appreciated art among theater critics and historians.
 
“The American musical, especially as revolutionized by Rodgers and Hammerstein, is every bit an American theater art from as the plays of O’Neill, Miller, and Albee,” she said. “The Light in the Piazza” is that kind of musical, without necessarily all the musical traditions of chorus lines, or dancing.”
 
In her thirteen years, Smith feels that she’s achieved what she’s set out to do. “We’ve broadened the audience base in the community, and I think our stay in the Lincoln Theater has helped us do that,” she said. “We’ve focused on American theater. We’ve focused on new plays.” “The Light in the Piazza” was a novel and film, about a protective mother of a beautiful but childlike daughter and what happens when the daughter falls in love with a young boy while vacationing in Italy.
 
“It’s very intimate, it’s almost operatic too, though,” she said. “What’s really special, though, is the music, it’s the equivalent of high serious music of a contemporary kind, it is music that elevates the story.” The music and lyrics are by Adam Guettel, and the show won 11 Tony nominations and won six Tony Awards, including Best Score.
 
“We’ve decided to do something different which I think will focus the music even more on the story,” Smith said. “It will be an intimate, chamber version, it brings out each voice and instrument clearly and with great emotion.”

The music will be performed by a five-piece ensemble of harp, violin, bass and cello under the direction of Paul Sportelli on piano..

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