Henry 6 is an audacious venture for the Globe and one that could easily go awry. Artistic director Barry Edelstein took the three-play arc and adapted it into two: Flowers and France and Riot and Reckoning. They combine for nearly six hours of stage time over two nights.
The Globe didn’t do itself any favors by crowing that, with this dual production, it’s one of the few theaters to produce Shakespeare’s entire canon. Was this an attempt to create unique and vibrant theater or simply cross it off a list?
Thankfully, the former.
Henry 6 dives into a fraught time in English history. After initial successes in France, detailed in Henry V, the crown is losing the Hundred Years War. At home, decades-old animosities between noblemen are metastasizing into civil war: The War of the Roses between Lancastrian and Yorkist factions. Bookish and shrill, Henry 6 (Keshav Moodliar) seems ill-suited to handle either crisis. He does not help himself by marrying the calculating Margaret (Elizabeth Davis).
There are more than 30 characters in Flowers and France alone. Understanding their inter-relationships might require an entire semester of exposition, but Edelstein devises some clever solutions. In one case, the Duke of York (William DeMerritt) uses an anachronistic and comical visual aid to explain the virtually incomprehensible family tree (i.e, who should be king). Edelstein also gets credit for trusting the audience and not overexplaining.
Flowers and France is a tour de force and Riot and Reckoning starts strong as well. The Duke of York hires Jack Cade (Tally Sessions), a populist rabble rouser, to soften the ground for a coming coup. Humorous comparisons with the current political climate are inescapable.
From there, the show dives into the War of the Roses, and it’s not pretty. Civil wars can be especially nasty and Lancaster v. York is a prime example. The last half of Riot and Reckoning follows repeated cycles of murder, sadness and revenge with diminishing returns. By necessity, the occasional levity that had punctuated the productions disappears entirely.
There are so many standout performance but DeMerritt’s York and Davis’s Margaret rise to the top. Edelstein incorporates various media, including videos of community members as spirits and other apparitions, and the music is fantastic.
Ultimately, Henry 6 is a big commitment and worth it. The shows are (mostly) fast-paced and offer surprising comic touches. It’s an event.
