It has taken San Diego’s the Old Globe 89 years to get around to producing William Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” trilogy, which opened over the weekend in a new, two-play adaptation written by artistic director Barry Edelstein. It was worth the wait.
Cutting down the plays, trimming dozens of characters and making the story of a little-known 15th century English king compelling to American audiences is no small feat. But Edelstein’s adaptation, titled collectively as Henry 6, impresses in the clarity of its storytelling, the thrilling and dramatic arc of its action, its balance of darkness and humor and the visually stunning design of the production, which Edelstein also directed.
With this summer’s production, the Globe has finally completed the Shakespeare canon by producing all of the Bard’s 38 plays — a feat achieved by only 10 other theater American theater companies. Edelstein has billed Henry 6 as the largest and most ambitious production in Globe history, with the work of nearly 1,000 San Diegans involved both on and off stage.
Edelstein has condensed the Bard’s three Henry VI plays into two — The 2-hour, 50-minute “Part One: Flowers and France” and the 2-hour, 30-minute “Riot and Reckoning.” The plays feature the same 30-member cast playing 60 so characters over a span of some 50 years.
The two plays are rotating in repertory six nights a week through Sept. 15 on the Globe’s outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre stage. The plays can stand alone, though Part One ends with a cliffhanger and together they tell a complete story, so I recommend seeing them both, and in order.
“Henry 6” is the story of England’s Henry VI, the pious and pacifistic son of the heroic warrior king Henry V, who famously won France for England but died when his son was just a baby. Henry VI’s disinterest in ruling, politics and battle created a power vacuum that entices the avaricious Duke of York and his heirs to violently battle for the crown in the 30-year War of the Roses between the House of Lancaster (Henry’s side, symbolized by the white rose) and the House of York (led by the Duke of York, Richard Plantagenet, and his sons, Edward and Richard, wearing the red rose).
As a Shakespeare historian and educator, Edelstein smartly opens the first play with a brief and cleverly staged prologue to catch the audience up on the three past kings before Henry VI is born. It’s one of many theatrical devices Edelstein conceived — including visual projections, color palettes, costume design and a comic slide show — to ensure audience members always know which house is in charge in the violent and ever-turning wheel of power.
And while he trimmed out extraneous characters and scenes, Edelstein fortunately retained the plays’ most beautiful monologues, including Lord Talbot’s heartbreaking battleground farewell to his son and Henry VI’s tearful anti-war lament for England’s people and peaceful pastoral life.
Also, the way Edelstein thoughtfully structured and cast the two plays creates a neat mirroring effect, where some characters in Part One resemble in style those in Part Two, and — conversely — some characters contrast as polar opposites.
For similarity, he cast the charismatic actor Gregg Mozgala as the scheming and power-hungry Duke of Suffolk in Part One and as York’s murderous son Richard in Part Two. (This love-to-hate character, who barks and crawls around like the vicious dog he calls himself, got his own follow-up Shakespeare play, “Richard III”).
For contrast, the excellent actor Tally Sessions plays the noble and loyal English general Lord Talbot in Part One, and the greedy and buffoonish rebel leader Jack Cade in Part Two.
Keshav Moodliar leads the cast as Henry VI, a challenging role that requires his character to mature from age 8 to 49 over two plays. The gawky childhood scenes aren’t convincing (particularly Edelstein’s decision to have him stand on his throne and shout SoCal-style “that was awesome!” in one scene). But Moodliar’s gentle, world-weary maturity in Part Two is very moving.
Women don’t come off particularly well in Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays (they’re seen as wanton, witches and “she-devils”). But Edelstein casts these women well. In Part One, the luminous Cassia Thompson plays the idealistic French battle commander Joan la Pucelle (the maid), who Americans know as Joan of Arc. In Part Two, Elizabeth A. Davis is fierce and tough as iron as Henry’s wife, Queen Margaret, who like Joan in France, leads England’s army in the absence of a strong king.
William DeMerritt bristles with volcanic energy as the calculating and power-hungry Duke of York. Mike Sears shows his range as the corrupt Cardinal in Part One and as both the honest Old Clifford and a grieving father in Part Two. Mahira Kakkar is hilarious as the elderly gardener Alexander Iden in Part Two. Also strong are Victor Morris as the Earl of Salisbury, the fiery Sofia Jean Gomez as the Earl of Warwick, Jose Balistrieri as the frighteningly vengeful Young Clifford and the nicely understated Ian Lassiter as Henry’s uncle and lord protector Gloucester in Part One and as the cool and aloof Edward, son of York, in Part Two.
Just as Shakespeare created clowns, funny scenes and bawdy jokes to appeal to the groundlings (common folk who paid a penny to stand in front of the stage), Edelstein has incorporated a great deal of often-anachronistic humor into Henry 6.
Some of it works very well — like the playful “La Vie en Rose” cabaret scene in France — to break up the many exciting battle scenes viscerally staged by fight choreographer Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum. But the tonal transition between these scenes sometimes feels uneven and clunky.
Part Two opens with Jack Cade’s rebellion, which unmistakably resembles the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The clownish Cade wears the horned helmet and flag face paint (here the Union Jack, rather than Old Glory) of a much-photographed QAnon conspiracist, and the easily-swayed crowd hang an educated nobleman who Edelstein renamed for this play “Mike Spence.”
It’s pointed, funny and timely. But the immediate shift back in time to the 1400s feels abrupt, and that contemporary period and its costumes are never revisited.
David Israel Reynoso’s gorgeous costume designs mark the passage of time and the end of peace between the two plays. The lush silks, brocades, fur collars and velvets of Part One give way to black leather pants with silver studs, body armor, military boots and slick three-piece suits. And Julián Mesri’s original music transitions from ethereal and earthy in Part One to wailing rock guitars as the chaos of war ramps up in Part Two.
Lawrence E. Moten III’s two-story, scenic design incorporates hidden pop-up elements, spinning staircases, a turntable and multiple high-resolution video panels on which Caite Hevner’s projections help set the scene (waving lavender fields for France and red and white roses for the houses of York and Lancaster). Melanie Chen Cole designed the multilayered sound design and Mextly Couzin designed the truly breathtaking lighting.
As part of Edelstein’s campaign to introduce more San Diegans to Shakespeare, the Globe invited more than 250 local residents to film or play live parts in every Henry 6 performance this summer. Most of these roles were pre-filmed and are being projected nightly onstage as the voices of spirits and peasants. Some are brief walk-on parts.
This summer the Globe has used the occasion of Henry 6 to revamp the courtyard that connects its three theaters in Balboa Park. There are more tables with umbrellas, an expanded pub menu and an outdoor exhibit that traces the Globe’s history and its productions of all of Shakespeare’s plays since 1935.
The arrival of Henry 6 feels like a major San Diego cultural event, and fortunately the plays themselves — as adapted and reimagined by Edelstein themselves — live up to expectations.
Henry 6
When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays. “One: Flowers and France” and “Two: Riot and Reckoning” are running in repertory through Sept. 15 (performances Sept. 8, 10, 11, 12 and 15 will begin at 7 p.m.)
Where: Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, The Old Globe, 1363 Old Globe Way, Balboa Park, San Diego
Tickets: $40 and up. Separate tickets are required for each play.
Info: (619) 234-5623
Online: theoldglobe.org
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