Newsweek
September 7, 1981

Royal Destiny

By JACK KROLL

When Prince Charles sees Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I (I hope he goes to the theater) is he regretfully reminded of a time when being the Prince of Wales was a real job, with your life on the line and the fate of your country depending on your courage, military skill and political savvy? Or does he thank heaven that all that nonsense is past and that he can concentrate on riding polo ponies and breeding future princes? What might strike Charles about Prince Hal in Shakespeare's great history play is that the young rapscallion is determined to have it both ways. While England is rent by storm and strife and his father, King Henry IV, is trying to deal with a tough coalition of rebels led by the English Henry Percy, the Scottish Douglas and the Welsh Glendower, young Hal is hanging around with a bunch of boozers, wenchers and petty heisters led by Sir John Falstaff. But in the great scene with his angry father, the Prince makes it clear that chomping on these wild oats is just his way of preparing for his true destiny of royal heroism.

Des McAnuff, the gifted 29-year-old director, has not attempted to impose an "English" style on his production for the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park, emphasizing instead the American virtues of sheer energy and emotional openness. These virtues have their defects. Stephen Markle as Henry IV hurtles through his several long speeches like a verbal hydroplane. It's as if the contemporary audience can't be trusted to be interested in Shakespeare's nuances of meaning and music. Something similar goes on in the performance of Mandy Patinkin as Henry Percy, called Hotspur, the rebel who soars and falls like a comet. Patinkin (who played Che in the original Broadway cast of "Evita") is a terrific young actor, and he communicates Hotspur's passion and romantic yet realistic nature; if he ever slows down a bit and fine-tunes his technique he could be one of America's best Shakespeareans.

Controlled Fire: The entire production crackles like heat lightning over a battlefield. John Vickery plays Prince Hal with a controlled fire and sensitive hint of the pathos of royal destiny that demands that he must be larger than life (the exact opposite of the pathos of royal destiny today). As Falstaff, Shakespeare's King Lear of comedy, Kenneth McMillan wisely refuses to try for the glorious grotesqueries of a Ralph Richardson. McMillan's Falstaff is like a Hoboken barfly marinated in 100-proof bluster and braggadocio. But he captures the Falstaffian tension between the petty and the magnanimous, and the marvelous tavern scenes between Falstaffand Hal have all the doomed tenderness of their fatherson relationship. There's a moat, a boat, a drawbridge, a blond horse, and the battle scenes devised by B. H. Barry are among the fiercest stage fights I've ever seen. Joseph Papp has been producing free Shakespeare for 25 years (all the plays except Henry VIII). This is among the most enjoyable.

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