Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – NAATCO’s ambitious two-part HENRY VI is strikingly staged and clearly told

• By drediman
• August 27, 2018
• No Comments

The company of NAATCO’s two-part “Henry VI” at the Mezzanine Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres.

This weekend, I took in The National Asian American Theatre Company’s (or “NAATCO’s”) ambitious Off-Broadway production of Shakespeare’s Henry VI at the Mezzanine Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres (a welcome and invaluable new space for nomadic companies like NAATCO). For this staging, the trilogy that makes up these violent history plays has been newly and efficiently truncated into two parts, entitled “Foreign Fire” and “Civil Strife”.  Although considered some of the Bard’s lesser history plays, seeing Henry VI in its entirety gives audiences the opportunity to get a good look at the churning gastric juices that actually move a nation’s history forward. Power and stability, Shakespeare presuppongly suggests, are fickle – from the standpoints of both domestic discord and foreign policy and warfare – and seeing the political machinations on this panoramic scale is rare.

Henry VI picks up where Henry V ends and concludes where Richard III commences. Sandwiched between these two much more well known and performed plays are decades worth of painful national conflicts. In France, the lands won and claimed by Henry VI for England are hotly disputed in a seemingly unending series of bloody battles. Back in England, Richard of York believes that the crown is rightfully his, launching the War of the Roses between the houses of Lancaster (whose limp and vulnerable Henry VI wears the crown) and York. This nearly six hour condensation – the cumulative running time between the two parts – smartly keeps the action moving at an exciting clip without sacrificing the many details of the dizzying plot mechanizations.

Stephen Brown-Fried helms this huge effort – a far cry from his intimate, deeply moving production of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing at the Public Theatre three summers ago, also for NAATCO – and he does so with impressive theatrical imagination and thrilling momentum. Only with a few props and a pair of mobile staircases at his disposal, he manages to create a strikingly stylized world while creating vivid stage pictures. I would keep an eye out for future productions from this talented director. As for his large, unstintingly hardworking cast, it’s comprised of some of the most accomplished and talented Asian American actors working in New York theater today. And even if some performances/performers were stronger than others – veteran actors Mia Katigbak and Rajesh Bose were in particularly fine form – it was a great pleasure to see these underserved actors in such non-traditional roles (the production is gender-blind, too), telling Shakespeare’s elaborate, albeit timeless, story with commendable clarity, conviction, and unified point of view.

RECOMMENDED

HENRY VI: FOREIGN WARS & CIVIL STRIFE
Off-Broadway, Play
The National Asian American Theatre Company
The Mezzanine Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres
5 hours, 45 minutes (each part includes one intermission)
Through September 8