Henry V by Oregon Shakespeare Festival (review)

In 2018 Oregon Shakespeare Festival completed its staging of Shakespeare's second tetralogy with a bold, imaginative, and disturbing production of Henry Vin the Thomas Theatre, where Richard IIand 1and 2 Henry IVhad also been staged. Spectators fortunate to have seen all four of the productions were thus able to imagine the Thomas as England itself, the "space" where all four plays dramatize this traumatic period of England's history. Adding to the pleasure of seeing the whole tetralogy in sequence in a single space, rare enough in American theater today, was the joy of seeing the superb Daniel José Molina, last season's Hal in the Henry IVplays (reviewed in SB36.2), emerge as the fierce, often cruel, vulnerable, yet finally charming Henry V. Equally enjoyable was seeing the return of two other actors from last season: Tyrone Wilson, who last season assumed the role of Falstaff in Henry IV, and here the only other actor besides Molina to have a single role, the Duke of Exeter; and Michele Mais, who reprised her role as Mistress Quickly in a heart-wrenching narration of Falstaff's death, and was hilarious as Alice, Katherine's maid and translator of bawdy English.

Richard L. Hay's sparse set was employed in often astonishing configurations on the Thomas's square stage, surrounded on three sides by steeply banked seats. Upstage center was a wall, perhaps twenty feet high, made of low, rectangular, gray wooden boxes fixed together at irregular and apparentlyinsecure angles, resembling perhaps a small child's design project or a three-dimensional cubist construction. A metal staircase winding right up to the top was used by soldiers during battle scenes and by the mayor of Harfleur. Four heavy ropes hung from the ceiling and were used by soldiers during battle to swing up and over their opponents. As spectators entered a few actors emerged from the wings and began pushing this wall counter-clockwise on hidden wheels, with more actors gradually joining to help. This process lasted perhaps ten to fifteen minutes, and was obviously monotonous and meant to be degrading to the soldiers. While its symbolism was not immediately clear, a through-line of symbolic meaning emerged from the boxes and the initial structure as the play developed. One probable symbolism, especially given the vaguely WWI-era gray fatigues of the soldiers during combat, was the now oft-staged image, prominent in the final violent minutes of last season's Julius Caesar, of the endless cycle of human warfare and bloodshed. The boxes themselves were easily maneuvered into various configurations for the battle scenes, such as a platform from which Henry V delivered his St. Crispin's Day speech, and they also became the walls of Harfleur. More frighteningly, the boxes also resembled coffins, as if the soldiers were constructing the battlefields of France with their own tombs.

Hay symbolized the bloodied victims of battle with dozens of blood-red body suits, which soldiers pulled from the wooden boxes when they were scattered around the stage to create battlements or defenses. Soldiers slammed these red garments violently on the floor to symbolize killing their enemies; or, when the English forces learned that the boys in their camp had been slaughtered by departing French soldiers, they flung what seemed like hundreds of the suits viciously against the boxes while shouting and grunting. This scene, especially because it lasted at least a full minute and thus in stage time seemed quite long, was visually and...