Blood Royal (review)

The Southwest Shakespeare Company's seventeenth season opened with an original adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy by "Renaissance man" Michael Flachmann, Shakespeare professor (California State University, Bakersfield), editor (of Shakespeare from Page to Stage: An Anthology of the Most Popular Plays and Sonnets, Prentice Hall, 2007), dramaturg (at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City), and promoter (Camp Shakespeare founder, Cedar City).

The production was noteworthy on a number of counts. First, editing down Shakespeare's three-play text, usually requiring ten-and-a-half hours to act, into a coherent, two-and-a-half hour performance is no mean feat. The first half of the performance covered Henry VI, Parts 1 and 2; the second half Part 3. Given this breakdown, the emphasis was clearly on the Lancastrian and Yorkist protagonists of the civil war rather than the loss of France and the famous characters of Talbot, Joan of Arc, or Jack Cade. Flachmann invented a one-person chorus, who summarized the non-dramatized action and who spoke in rhymed iambic pentameter written by the adaptor, to fill in the gaps or to foreshadow what happened on stage. Director Jared Sakren in the after-show assured the audience that the rest of the dialogue was all by Shakespeare (except for a few updated words). Though the script was severely cut and a few scenes moved around, the narrative of the trilogy and the "War of the Roses" story remained remarkably coherent. The role of the Chorus was purely functional. It did not, in the Greek manner, comment at length on the morality of the main action. Rather, it supplied just the right amount of information to weave the action together seamlessly, and the actor who performed the role did so with speed (almost too much at times), as if Flachmann and the director did not want to make this device an intrusion on Shakespeare's text. Everything that is exciting, startling, and sensational in his trilogy was left in or put on the stage: beheadings, burnings, strangling, ghosts, witchcraft, infidelities, and treasons.

The overall design concept of the production was traditional. Costumes were period-like (though simplified), and sets were minimal. King Henry VI was dressed in an angelic white gown, befitting his saintly temperament, while Richard of Gloucester, as befits a villain, sported dark, slicked-back hair, beard, and black leather. Those of the Lancastrian party wore red roses as part of their costume, and those of the York party wore white for much of the production. In one scene, red and white rose bushes were set downstage left and right with the relevant characters arranged behind them. While bordering on the clichéd for seasoned theatre-goers, the device was useful no doubt for the uninitiated—who were the production's intended audience. The three familiar spirits whom La Pucelle conjured up wore a bright, shocking shade of red to suggest sin or lewdness. A short while later, the same costume was visible under the habits of the monks assigned to burn...