Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2 (review)

In a 1998 concert entitled "Dress to Kill," the multifaceted performer and comedian Eddie Izzard enacts a short scene in which one of his many characters asks another to choose between "cake or death." The moment arises out of Izzard's speculation about the unlikely event of a contemporary Anglican Inquisition involving stern vicars offering baffled congregants the option of dessert or demise. Izzard's unusual juxtaposition could also be applied in the consideration of another marker of English identity, for it serves as a conveniently succinct metonym for the choices faced by Prince Hal in the two parts of Shakespeare's Henry IV. Setting a locale saturated in the immediate pleasures of sex and food against one consumed by obsessive guilt about the past and narcissistic concerns about the succession, the plays explicitly contrast the comic "cakes and ale" of Falstaff 's tavern environs with the history of "uncivil rule" in Henry IV's court. While the antithesis in Izzard's routine provokes an obvious preference for sweets over suicide, a production of the two Henry IV plays must account for Hal's inverted selection of "death" over "cake" through his acceptance of royal responsibility and his ultimate rejection of "sweet Jack Falstaff." Dominic Dromgoole's fine 2010 production of both parts of Henry IV at the Globe—the first in the history of the Bankside reconstruction—cut a fine line between condemnation and approval of Hal's decision by presenting a confident prince whose actions are colored by clear intent from the outset and a Falstaff whose huge initial appeal grew stale and ultimately crumbled. Thus Dromgoole's clear yet equivocal Henry IV let its audiences "eat their cake and have it too."

The director's "have it both ways" approach to Henry IV reflects a number of policies adopted by the Globe since Dromgoole became artistic director in 2005. Among them is a relaxed attitude towards design that generally maintains a period atmosphere while offering designers the opportunity to specify and clarify directorial readings through scenic and costume choices in line with twenty-first century interpretive practices. Henry IV designer John Fensom took full advantage of the new liberty and advanced a design scheme that, while ahistorical from a production standpoint, paradoxically worked to heighten the sense of history in the theatre. Earth-toned costumes mixed Elizabethan and Jacobean styles, but generally stayed true enough to period to satisfy all but the sartorial purist. Parchment banners emblazoned with heraldic crests and noble names hung from the railings of the upper seating galleries, quite literally surrounding the audience with history and connecting contemporary groundlings to the historical events onstage through battle costumes that reproduced the same insignia. Similar banners of larger size deployed to distinguish the various locales: a Plantagenet crest signaled a court milieu, a tattered boar's head banner indicated a tavern settling, and a rampant dragon prefigured the shift to Wales. As if reflecting the smaller banners that obscured the raw wooden balustrades of the galleries, the stage curtains could be drawn to reveal a two-story, unpainted wooden scaffold in front of the permanent tiring house façade. The intricate platform provided vertical space used largely in the tavern...