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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2009 > July > 02
Thursday, July 2, 2009
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Channeling ‘Henry V’
For almost two decades actor and Austin Chronicle arts editor Robert Faire has wanted to take Shakespeare’s history play about England’s most storied warrior king and re-imagine it as a one-man play.
Now, Faires’ dream — or is it an obsession? — has come true. Following Shakespeare’s instructions that the audience just imagine the courts, Faires takes the audience from Henry’s throne across the English Channel into the French court, through a fearful war and into one of the most charming courtship scenes in Shakespeare’s oeuvre.
Faires will perform ‘Henry V’ at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and 5 p.m. Sundays through July 25 at the Off Center, 2211 Hidalgo St. $15. www.rudemechs.com.
And there’s a special July 4th performance at 5 p.m. with sparklers and champagne
Q: Of all the Bard’s plays, why choose Henry V?
Robert Faires: Ever since I saw Laurence Olivier’s film of Henry V when I was in college, I’ve been drawn to the play. Part of it is just the character of Henry, who’s like the Errol Flynn of Shakespearean kings — dashing, heroic, good with a sword, gets the girl in the end. Who wouldn’t have fun playing that guy?
But mostly, I just love that the play is so unabashedly theatrical. Right from the get-go, you have the Chorus telling the audience that there’s no way this huge story can be presented the way it really happened, but you know what, these actors are going to do it anyway, and the audience will just have to use its imagination to bring it to life. And he keeps coming back with that message again and again, setting the scene with these beautifully descriptive speeches that are my favorite parts of the play.
And Henry himself, I discovered, is very much an actor. He puts on a number of different roles in the course of the play, pretending to be something that he isn’t to get what he wants. And seeing that made me think about how we all do that. I know Henry V is typically seen as a play about war, and you certainly can’t get away from the war in it, but it also feels very much to me like a play about how we play different parts in life and what it takes to find our authentic self.
Q: How did you distill the story (stories) down for one actor? What kind of creative choices did you make?
Faires: The more I studied the individual scenes, the more I saw them in two voices, usually Henry’s and that of some person or group he was facing off against: the bishop of Canterbury, a French ambassador, the three lords who betray him, his soldiers, the princess of France. So I pared lines and scenes that would help highlight the essence of those conflicts and how they affected Henry. Unfortunately, that meant ditching almost all the low comic characters and most of the French scenes, and with them went a lot of the play’s scope. But what you get in return, I feel, is a heightened intimacy, particularly with Henry, which seems fitting for a version of his story that’s just one actor and the audience.
Q: Why use Shakespeare’s instructions for the audience to use their imagination to conjure the scenes?
Faires: Well, it’s a great way to short-circuit criticism about a lame set and costumes, for one thing. But the real reason I love it is the way it throws an arm around the audience’s shoulder, pulls them in close, and whispers, “You’re in this, too. You’re making it happen.” It’s wonderfully conspiratorial. So if audience members are at all engaged with the show, it raises the stakes for them and makes the experience very personal. I’m very much relying on the audience to be my collaborators here, to be the English lords and soldiers that Henry speaks to, to fill out the French court. This Henry V is a one-man show only in the sense that my name is the only one on the poster. But the truth is, I’ll be sharing the stage with every person who comes to see it.
Photo courtesy Red Then Productions.
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