Henry VIII (review)

Shakespeare and Fletcher's Henry VIII has long been associated with spectacle and pageant. Samuel Pepys, upon watching William Davenant's Restoration staging of the play, noted that he was "mightily pleased, better than [he] ever expected, with the history and shows of it." By 1910, Henry Beerbohm Tree's production necessitated an ensemble of 172 people to enact the play's "shows." The Folger Theater's production also created spectacle, but of an altogether different nature. Rather than emphasize the pomp and circumstance associated with courtly life and politics, Robert Richmond's production dramatized the ways in which courtly life and politics makes a spectacle of the monarch's most intimate relationships—with his family and his closest advisors.

Using an expanse of metallic-looking gratework with a patterning that was suggestive of a fleur-de-lis, Tony Cisek's striking set evoked gothic, medieval austerity. The gratework provided a backdrop, and panels of it created walkways upstage left and right. Cisek literally encased the stage's wooden support pillars with the gratework. The set made the most of available space by creating a balcony of sorts; a semi-circular platform extended over the stage, suggestive of a room in a castle's turret. The steely tone of the gratework, along with Klyph Stanford's lighting, which created at times a smoky or hazy effect, evoked the cold, foggy, damp, dimly lit interior of a medieval castle where intrigue and desire would play a part in important affairs of state.

At the same time, William Ivey Long's sumptuous costumes conveyed a sense of wealth, calling attention to the superficiality of appearance—all may not be "true," but all certainly was well with the king and the nobility. The rich, muted hues of the gowns worn by Katherine, Elizabeth, and Mary, and the garb worn by Henry VIII and his noblemen were in keeping with a Holbein-esque portrayal of Henry's era, representing the wealth and power of the English monarchs and nobility. The colors contrasted starkly with the brilliant scarlet robes worn by Wolsey and Campeius, which represented wealth and power of a different sort.

Robert Richmond's direction attempted to make the play as accessible to a modern audience as possible. He focused the production on the interaction between Henry and Wolsey, Katherine, Anne Boleyn, and Cranmer, cutting the more marginal roles, such as that of Sir Thomas More. He took us through the play's action—and gossip—at a suitable pace, lingering appropriately for a few moments of grandeur in scenes like Anne's coronation, but generally moving things along quickly.

(L-R) Anthony Cochrane (Cardinal Wolsey), Ian Merrill Peakes (King Henry VIII), Lawrence Redmond (Duke of Norfolk), and Naomi Jacobson (Queen Katherine) in Shakespeare's Henry VIII, on stage at Folger Theatre through November 21, 2010.

Photo courtesy of Carol Pratt.

Henry VIII depicts a King who is educated over the course of the play. While trusting of Wolsey in the beginning, Henry is, by the end, disillusioned as to his advisor's motives, and he has claimed the full authority of the monarchical role: it is he who out-maneuvers his advisory council in regard to Cranmer. Ian Merrill Peakes stepped ably into the role of...