Henry V

Among lines that the Cambridge Drama Festival has cut from Shakespeare's Henry V are those in which the Chorus, introducing the scene at Agincourt, apologizes to the audience for the inadequate treatment that a battle must receive on the stage:

And so our scene must to the battle fly;

Where, O for pity! we shall much disgrace

With four or five most vile and ragged foils,

Right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous,

The name of Agincourt.

The omission of this passage is entirely justified. Even in the difficult business of staging battles, the Cambridge Drama Festival's Henry V needs precious few apologies.

Certainly the C.F.D. need bow to no theatre anywhere on the matter of a stage itself. The "modified Elizabethan" set that Robert O'Hearn had designed in Sanders has classic beauty. Its four distinct staging levels and its simple lines provide infinitely various opportunities for blocking, for lighting effects, and for wonderful fadeout exits. And O'Hearn has not only made the set beautiful and functional; he has also blended it in perfectly as an integral part of Sanders Theatre. It will really be a shame to see the thing dismantled in the fall.

In directing Henry, Douglas Seale has exploited the set's physical advantages to the limit. He stages the battles with uninhibited gusto, now sending his soldiers leaping into the audience, now bringing them onstage with ladders to scale the besieged fortress. He takes care, it seems, to avoid having his characters leave the stage by the same exit any two times during the evening. Indeed, Seale has probably been too assiduous in filling the background of each scene with two or three people leaning against posts or draped over railings; this often gives an artificial, posed effect. But in general Seale displays a sure taste for the fast-moving, the lavish, and the dramatic. So do Robert Fletcher, whose costumes are extravagant but not ostentatiously so, and Caldwell Titcomb, whose music is colorful and strong. In the last act, for a final daub of stage color, Seale and Titcomb have collaborated to introduce a boys' choir singing an original 15th century motet. Perched on the very top of O'Hearn's set, the boys seem almost as high up as a choir should be.

Henry V could have even more glorious staging, however, and still fail. What the play absolutely must have is a strong, authentic Henry--a King who, through the kaleidoscope of moods and situations in which Shakespeare places him, emerges as not just an "ideal" monarch but also as a believable man. Douglas Watson, who plays the title role in the Festival production, gives a performance that is far from flawless. However, he does succeed in making Henry an earnest, changing person, and the play succeeds with him.

The main difficulty that Watson has, and that several others in the cast share with him, is an inability to conquer Shakespeare's lines and to speak them naturally. The audience in Sanders can always hear Watson and almost always understand him. Through his sincere and intelligent performance, it can accept him as Henry V. But somehow it can never forget that he is up there reciting lines that are not Henry's but Shakespeare's--and often reciting them in a regrettable sing-song voice at that. Some of the other actors are more successful with their words. Thayer David as the King of France incorporates them beautifully into his scared, vacillating character. Sylvia Gassel as Mistress Quickly has a lovely, silvery scene of mourning over the death of Falstaff. Felicia Montealegre is delightful in both French and English as the Princess Katharine, who is wooed in the last act by the half-bashful Henry. Paul Sparer as the Welsh captain Fluellen is admirable as both a pedant and a patriot. Indeed, Fluellen's comic scenes are much more successful than those of the thieving Pistol, played by Ian Keith. Pistol's humor is obvious and heavy at best, and Keith seems to bear down a little harder than the role can bear.

Henry V, according to one authority, has not been produced professionally on the American stage for thirty years. This statistic, if true, merely gives Cambridge and Harvard additional reason to take pride in the current production at Sanders. The Cambridge Drama Festival has truly made an auspicious debut.