Theater: Kings of War grippingly compresses Shakespeare

The Belgian theater/opera director Ivo van Hove is hot right now in the theater world. The director of the innovative Toneelgroep (Theater-Group) Amsterdam, he now directs productions worldwide, tackling both new and iconic plays. In the last couple of years in NYC I saw both his riveting A View from the Bridge and more jumbled The Crucible (see review). Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music I saw his four hour Kings of War, an intense, provocative, and masterful compression and rewrite of five Shakespeare history plays (Henry V, Henry VI parts 1-3, and Richard III, with a bit of Henry IV Part 2 thrown in to boot). This is a big year for history plays in NYC that resonate with the current presidential election, and here a Belgian director has, with his outsider's keen eye, provided a great one.

The title Kings of War is a little misleading. While all these kings ruled England during times of war, this adaptation focuses less on battle scenes and strategy than on the kings' individual characteristics, creating a mini-seminar on leadership. Director van Hove does not simply condense, or provide "greatest hits" from the plays. He takes a specific point of .g. eview about each king and picks only those parts of the plays and ancillary characters within them that are relevant to that point of view. Hence, most comedic subplots, many memorable characters (Joan of Arc), and extended battle scenes are cut. For example, the only comic scene I can recall in this production was the wonderful scene in which the awkward, nervous young Henry V tries to seduce his intended bride Catherine of Valois, who taunts him in (untranslated) French. This scene was likely included to show how Henry V was at the start an adolescent trying to become a king. Despite the cuts, most character-revealing soliloquies and some intimate scenes with lovers, advisers, friends, and mortal enemies are retained, resulting in an intense focus on the core characteristics that did and did not make these leaders effective.  I sensed a director who knew exactly what he wanted to portray, and how the drama in the four hours should flow. Overall, the difference between viewing this saga via the traditional 15-20 hours of multi-play Shakespearean history and via these condensed 4 hours reminded me of the difference between analyzing the current US election via daily random internet browsing vs. reading a well done post-election analysis four years later. The first approach is more immediate, has the excitement of the unknown, and requires more sifting, but is also more subject to the viewer's sifting biases. The latter version is more editorial, relies less on the viewer's own judgement, but can provide needed historical perspective missing from the unfiltered version of history.

While Shakespeare's plays do not follow strict chronological history, Kings of War does so by rearranging material from the plays as needed. It follows a roughly three act structure, one each for Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard III. This provides an overview of the end of the middle ages in fifteenth century England, prior to the ascension of the Tudors (e.g. Henry VIII, Elizabeth I), who created the "modern" Renaissance England of Shakespeare, reigning for the following century. Shakespeare and his audience was looking back at history roughly as removed from them as Hamilton is to us, so there was both the resonant and the unfamiliar. The late medieval kings of Kings of War were caught up in clashes with France (the 100 Years War) and among the English dynasties (the War of the Roses). In the original plays Shakespeare paints this history with a broad palette. He is certainly most interested in the psychology of the kings, but also includes lots of battle strategy, political intrigue, romantic subplots, etc, as does House of Cards now, all to create a varied evening's entertainment and create dramatic peaks and valleys of intensity. This production, in contrast, provides unrelenting laser-like character studies of three men:

Henry V, who inherits the throne that his father seized in a coup d'etat, eventually rises to the occasion as both a leader and a warrior, defeating France and solidifying the stability of the throne. van Hove focuses on how Henry V gains increasing confidence as a leader, and how he overcomes low expectations (rather like George W. Bush, whose youth was mostly marked by partying). van Hove leaves out an ethical crisis that Shakespeare addresses. After his famed victory at Agincourt, Henry V executed several hundred French captive nobles, weighing the importance of their potential damage to the occupying force as more important than the medieval tradition of sparing such hostages. Leaving out this episode makes the character less complex, but allows the production to focus on the process of the evolution of a competent leader.

His son Henry VI was by all accounts a weak, vacillating, and possibly clinically schizophrenic man, ill-suited to leadership. This production focuses on how such a man is essentially pushed aside by the strong court leaders, becoming increasingly irrelevant. This reminded me a bit of some accounts of the passive, deferential decision-making of which some accuse G.W. Bush after 9/11, when Cheney and the neocons manufactured the invasion of Iraq. This leader curls up into a ball as the crises mount. Here, Henry VI's soliloquy in which he envies the life of the shepherd over that of the king is set as he wanders offstage among (filmed) actual sheep. The production was the perhaps the best I have seen in mixing traditional and contemporary dramatic presentation techniques. The main set was a spare, military-command style room, but much action occurred offstage in corridors filmed with an immediate, shaky hand-held camera, sometimes filmed live during the play, sometimes (as in the sheep) from pre-taped sessions. Much like modern politics, the leaders were followed continuously by cameramen, with frequent close-ups. The live theater experience therefore blended live (but amplified) stage with TV, and we could see the characters from afar and up close, just like we do now as we follow a political campaign.  In the older tradition, a good politician was defined by his speeches, and the impression made from afar, like a stage actor. In the modern tradition, we also see them in super-close up like a TV actor, intently looking for any twitch to betray nonverbalized pathology. Pretty clearly Henry VI could not stand up to that treatment.

Richard III is the most famous and produced of these plays, so its condensation initially seemed more troubling to me, as I missed things that were familiar. Once I got over that, the performance by Hans Kesting was memorably stunning in its psychopathology, ratcheting from obsequiousness to violence to insecurity in an instant. After the "My kingdom for a horse" speech, he loses it on the battlefield, galloping insanely in circles, and dying offstage by rushing into a filmed bright light (there is no swordplay in this production). In van Hove's take, Richard III is only in leadership for one purpose--to take what he wants by any means, then cast it aside when bored with it. This could mean a person or a country. The production originated in Amsterdam this year, allowing the director to create as many Trump analogies as he could, and (perhaps) allowing the actor to ad lib a bit for the NYC audience. The insertion of Trump-isms was equally amusing and chilling, especially paired the with tableaux of dead bodies of murdered associates and relatives, all shown by the roving backstage camera. This does seem to the the European apocalyptic view of what a Trump presidency would be like.

The actors' performances were uniformly impressive as far as I can tell, since the text was entirely in Dutch, translated using supratitles as is done in opera these days. It was very much like watching a good foreign film with subtitles--you get in the flow quickly. Reading some European reviews (i.e. by bilingual reviewers), the translation into Dutch is mostly into modern transparent vernacular. I heard no iambic pentameter. The supratitled English translations made familiar text quite clear, but did not use the original Shakespearean English. All this was quite easy to follow and emotionally clear; the guttural sound of Dutch fit well with many of the angry speeches. This was not Shakespeare for those in love with Shakespeare's poetic language, or with the often-discursive breadth of these panoramic history plays. But it was a powerful evening of theater with well-drawn characters. Kings of War made me reflect on how different the personalities of our highest leaders can be, how we may only vaguely appreciate these differences (the election of 2016 notwithstanding), and how such personal strengths and limitations can ruin or benefit the whole country.

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