To my way of thinking, there are few plays in the Shakespearean canon with more beautiful language than is contained in “Henry V.”
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends” and “We few, we very few, we band of brothers” are to name but two of many opening lines to its ringing speeches.
The star of this production, dear readers, is the script, and out at Centre Valley's Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, director Matt Pfeiffer lets it generously give the audience a wide berth to the journeys of the characters of this production.
The opening prologue pleads for “a kingdom for a stage, princes to act and monarchs to behold the swelling scene” and so we begin the tale with a young Prince Hal just having been crowned King Henry the V, and we are soon off to the sounds of war, culminating at the end of the play with a resounding English victory against all odds at the battle of Agincourt.
The set is barren, only having a three-tiered wooden platform in the center and huge wooden arches on three sides which disgorge and swallow up actors throughout the show, and period costumes well represent the battlefield and court locations in France and England.
The large cast, some of whom also played in rep at the wonderful comedy “The Foreigner”, displays a marvelous elocution in either the speaking of English or French accents, as well as some excellent French dialect, which I happen to understand as well.
It is of much credit to the actor playing Henry, Zack Robidas, that he doesn’t attempt to ‘chew the scenery’ (of which there is none anyway) in speaking his lines, but just lets them flow naturally, which gives them far greater effectiveness, and allows him a sense of quiet and dignified authority.
When he prays on the battlefield you are right there with him, and when he woos the French Princess Katherine at the end of the play, you understand why she falls sweetly to his rough charms.
Trappings have been discarded in favor of simplicity at this version of “Henry V”, and language has been recognized for the victor that it should be, over all.
Well done, Mr. Shakespeare. Well done, PSF.
A Theatre Fan