April Fool's Day has a long history, associated with the "allowed fool" or jester tradition, and related to our own freedom of speech. (An account of this history is on my Captain Future's Dreaming Up Daily blog today.)

The fool and the clown are also important in the history--and pre-history-- of theatre. These days we're most familiar with the figure of the fool in Shakespeare. The Fool is a character in the comedies of As You Like It and Twelfth Night, and the tragedies of King Lear and Hamlet. But the various aspects of the Fool, and the contrast with the King, or the law, is important in other plays in the Shakespeare canon as well.

In Shakespeare the Thinker, his new (and last) book, the late Shakespearian scholar A. D. Nuttall, writes of the many ways these themes weave through the cycle of histories which includes Henry IV, Part One. Richard II (the monarch of the play of that title which directly precedes the Henry IV plays) is a paradoxical character, sympathetic at times because he is philosophical and poetical, yet as a king he is ineffectual, indecisive (he sees too many ironies to act) and impulsive, given to arbitrary and quixotic decisons. (Nuttall says that the only actor equal to playing all this colors of Richard II was John Gielgud.)

But Bolingbroke who deposes him, is a practical man of action. His despair over the frivolities of his son, Prince Hal, are expressed at times in connection with Richard, who he compares to a Fool rather than a King. He is afraid Hal will be the same kind of monarch, ruled by folly.

The Fool character in the Henry IV plays is Falstaff, of course. (The photo is Ralph Richardson portraying Falstaff). In Shakespeare's time and place, as in our own, clowns were popular on the stage. Shakespeare used this appeal but gave it dramatic and thematic meaning. Falstaff is therefore a complex character. Like the Fool in the court jester tradition, he sees the folly of human vanities--in this case especially, of war. Like the trickster characters of many nations, including the Coyote and Raven in Native cultures, he is also a creature of guile and appetite, undone by his own vanities and vices. But like many fool characters, he represents the joys of life as well. His role in Prince Hal's life partakes of all these, and more.

Henry IV Part 1

Though the most enduring character in the Henry IV plays is Falstaff (wildly popular in Shakespeare’s time and later the subject of a novel, symphony, several operas and Orson Welles’ amazing film, The Chimes At Midnight) they are mainly about Prince Hal, and his journey to become the heroic Henry V.

The play of that title is the last in the sequence and the most familiar, owing to the movie versions by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh. The first play in this sequence is actually Richard II, about the ineffectual king deposed by Bolingbroke, who becomes Henry IV. Henry seizes the crown with popular support, at least until he has the imprisoned Richard killed. His reign is then threatened by rebels in the north with their own claim to the throne, and those wars are the substance of the Henry IV plays, particularly Part One, now on stage at North Coast Repertory Theatre.

 All of this actual English history was familiar and important to Shakespeare’s first audiences, so the very slow beginning of this text was more innately interesting to them than to us. The NCRT production directed by Gretha Omey moves swiftly through this thicket, partly by cutting and moving around text, partly with stripped down staging, a fast pace and a chorus substituting for several characters.

 The outlines of the action emerge pretty clearly, along with at least one of the main concerns of the play: the legitimacy of the king, and of his heir. Prince Hal spends his time not at court but in a tavern, in the company of the fallen nobleman, Falstaff. But when the war begins and Hal’s father doubts his loyalty as well as his fitness, Hal passes his first test with heroism on the battlefield.

 But what this production gains in speed and force it loses in complexity, characterization, subtlety (important to humor) and ultimately in meaning. Though the actors all have their strong moments (particularly James Read as Falstaff and Lonnie Blankenchip as Henry IV), the presentation tends towards shouted caricature. King Henry and Hotspur (a leader of the rebels) are Angry. Falstaff is Drunk. Prince Hal is Drunk, and then becomes Angry.

 This seems a stylistic choice--- one that some attendees may favor, particularly those who believe that the bipolarity of broad comedy and one-note melodrama defines theatre. They are likely to also enjoy the stage fights, which are presented with built-in sequences of slow mo. (Let audience members be forewarned to keep their seats throughout the play, however, or risk being run over by actors frequently dashing full speed through the aisles onto the stage.)

 While there is effective stagecraft supporting this approach, for me the most successful scenes were the few intimate stagings: between Hotspur (Victor Howard) and his wife, Lady Percie (Gretha Omey) and especially the reconciliation scene between Henry and Hal (Greag Brown.)

The reconciliation scene also benefits from a textual transposition, with excised lines moved to the very beginning of the play. But the production ends with a more questionable lifting of lines, from another play (the second part of Henry), transformed into a sentimental elegy for Hotspur, which tends to suggest the play is about him, which it isn’t.

 Everyone involved can be justly proud of the months of effort that went into this production, and Omey’s willingness to take risks is also admirable. But for me, too many key scenes didn’t work, in a production that bypasses many of the character questions as well as political and moral questions which constitute the difference between Shakespeare’s play and the equivalent of a medieval war movie with better language. As (almost) usual, I urge you to see and judge for yourself.

Curiously, this is the only review of North Coast Rep's Henry IV Part 1 published so far. Neither the Times Standard nor the Eureka Reporter chose to review it in their weekend arts sections, though Laura Provolt gave a rave review of Northcoast Prep's Cyrano in the Reporter.

There's more I could say about Henry IV and the North Coast Rep production, but one thing I could add to my review is the observation made by one of the actors in the Julie Taymor film version of Titus Andronicus (in a DVD extra): that Shakespeare is the toughest acting job around. It's generally true of directing, too.

But its an essential challenge to take on. Just yesterday as I scanned the newsstands at Northtown Books, I saw three periodicals with articles on Shakespeare featured on their covers. There are always new books as well as new productions.

Shakespeare is vitally important to theatre, but also eternally relevant to theatregoers. The questions of the legitimacy and authority of the monarch that are central to the cycle of history plays that includes the Henry IVs was a live question to Shakespeare's first audiences, facing the aging Queen Elizabeth who had no children or obvious heirs to the throne.

 Today, one can muse on the story of Prince Hal in view of our current monarch, George II: also a bad boy in his youth. It seems that with Afghanistan and Iraq, he may have seen his chance to become the heroic Henry V hero. Maybe he actually sees himself that way. It would seem so. And that's his tragedy, as well as ours.