Summary 
An ambitious dual production - both parts of Henry IV - presented in repertory or in a single evening. The farewell production for Shakespeare Repertory at the Ruth Page Theatre as they expand in Fall 1999 to become Chicago Shakespeare Theater with their own facility on Navy Pier. The production falters with some entertaining but distracting choices - Owen Glendower as a second-rate sorcerer; Rumour as a modern day clown - but the production is driven by the three key roles and a memorable farewell conclusion with a rousingly sung "The Chimes at Midnight."
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by James Noone. Costumes by Virgil Johnson. Lights by Donald Holder. Sound by Robert Neuhaus. Original music by Alaric Jans.
Cast
Kevin Gudahl (Prince Hal), Greg Vinkler (Falstaff), Patrick Clear (Glendower/Archbishop), Neil Friedman (Westmoreland), Susan Hart (Lady Percy), Robert Scogin (Worcester), Larry Yando (King Henry IV/Rumour), Thomas Vincent Kelly (Hotspur), Fredric Stone (Northumberland), Lusia Strus (Hostess), McKinley Carter (Lady Mortimer), Joe Foust (Prince John).
Analysis
Shakespeare Repertory's final production at Ruth Page Theatre after twelve seasons is a colossal six-hour marathon of both Henry IV plays. Director Barbara Gaines delivers an intense reflection on friendship and responsibility within a razor-sharp character study of three calculating men: Hal, Falstaff, and the King. The production begins with melancholy strains from viola and cello as stage fog slowly drifts and envelops the set. As the lights fade, an electronic chord reverberates like a rising hum, and upstage Larry Yando's sleeping Henry IV sits bolt upright in his chrome bed-frame from an intense nightmare and shouts, "Richard!" Haunted by usurpation and regicide, Yando's shifty-eyed King is wracked with guilt and sin.
The debauchery of his son Hal - especially apparent by contrast with the hot-bloodedly heroic Hotspur - seems to be King Henry's curse, and the King presents himself publicly with steely-eyed coldness and resolute stubbornness, but in private moments he hunches with anxiety and manically calculates, plotting his next maneuver. Henry's heavy tunic with silver studs and dark fur robe, along with his court's predominant black leather, contrasts with the typically brown earth-tones of the rebels. The traditional costuming serves the production well, unlike some of the anachronistic lighting effects. Yando's Henry, a strong man unaccustomed to becoming weakened, lurches center stage to join his council's deliberations, and they are oddly lit from above by modern florescent tubing - glaring and white, their faces made ghastly pale - as if within the basement den of someone's modern suburban home. Neon lights flicker along the perimeter of the stage, a thrust reddish platform lined with short black-steel grating and dark walls along the sides and upstage.
Kevin Gudahl's Hal, somewhat older than the character is typically portrayed, often wears his shirt open to the navel and sports sandy-blonde hair in a curly perm, a look too youthful a style for him, but the conceit is appropriate: Hal has a hard-eyed edge about him, no longer a young roustabout destined to be King, but a dissipated Prince on the verge of drinking away the best of his years while waiting to be crowned. Muscular and convincingly energetic, Gudahl's Hal - clearly and forcefully well-spoken, even his tone more a frustrated man than a young Prince-in-waiting - makes his first appearance in the Boar's Head tavern, sneaking under a blanket to surprise Falstaff with two young female prostitutes. After helping the huffingly interrupted Falstaff with his slippers, Hal leans against Falstaff's protruding belly as if the old man is a gargantuan pillow, and he throws himself wildly into the tavern hijinks. Gudahl's Hal, however, remains a cold and calculating politician, capable of sudden shifts into an unassailably iron will, as when he harshly concludes the mock-conversation with Falstaff as his father in 2.4 with his "I do, I will" rejection. Moments later, Hal reveals his willingness to cling to the moment, as he verbally abuses the Sheriff then scampers off to bed with a tavern whore.
Greg Vinkler completes the trio of strong lead performances with his waddling, huffing and puffing Falstaff. The bloated but boisterous Knight - also revealed to be a calculating and manipulative old man - shows a self-aware pragmatism, constantly the center of attention but conscious of Hal's participation, always drinking but never really drunk, frequently reminding the Prince of his loyalty and friendship. Falstaff directly addresses the audience, telling of his carefully calculated hopes for retirement as a favorite within the graces of a newly crowned King. Vinkler's Falstaff, long-haired and ungroomed, dresses in layers of well-worn rags, blustering and belching and making crude jokes or ironic remarks, and he represents a decided contrast to Yando's commanding Henry, a trim and muscular soldier with a stern expression and a tight precision in thought and action.
Gaines focuses on character study, the production elevated by her direction of the three central performers. Hal's choices are made clear by his interactions: within the drunken revelry at the Boar's Head, he hones his leadership skills and displays heroism and physical prowess (especially during the re-robbery on Gads' Hill); and at court he observes interactions and listens to conversations, even while behaving like a spoiled child or a disappointing drunkard. The physicality of the first play counterpoints the increasingly wild horseplay in and around the tavern with the impending civil war that finally erupts into battles Gaines depicts with frenetic fury within blood-red lighting. Scenes with the rebels are succinct glimpses, Gaines increasing the dramatics to account for the quick pacing: Glendower plays much more like Arthurian legend wizard Merlin than a Welsh warrior, wielding a wand to conjure a thunderbolt of leaping flame from a stage trap to impress his fellow conspirators; or, more effectively, the non-textual Lady Glendower softly singing a tender Welsh ballad for the rebels going off to war, a song joined by Lady Mortimer in what becomes a heartrending duet.
The story belongs to Gudahl's Hal, and a pair of scenes with Henry's war council prove illustrative, one bordering on the melodramatically overdone, the other subtly effective. During 3.2, Henry and the council pore over a war map, but Hal enters in a drunken lurch, and somewhat like an attention-seeking pre-teen, moons the audience and grabs a counselor by the collar, shoving him offstage. While the King shouts at him with fury, Hal sprawls across the table and mouths the words himself, as if he has heard the same speech over and over before. Yando's Henry grabs Hal by the shirt and flings him away, but when Hal fights back, he overpowers him until the men must be separated. Gudahl's Hal chooses the moment to suddenly attempt calm reasoning with the King, but Yando's Henry turns away, shakes off Hal's hand, and swipes the map from the table. More effective, if less showily dramatic, is the war council at Shrewsbury, in which Hal's proposal to fight Hotspur in single combat is ignored and a bowing Falstaff is rebuffed by Henry, who brushes past him without taking notice.
The two plays within the production can be seen individually in repertory or as a single show during a long evening with an ample dinner break between. Gaines' concludes the first half with a gripping battlefield sequence, the most insightful scene of the production, showing Hal knocked down in combat and sprawling on his back as Hotspur holds a sword's point to his neck. With distinctive honor, Hotspur allows Hal to rise and personally returns to him his sword, and they engage again, and in a mirror image, Hotspur is knocked down and Hal holds his sword to Hotspur's exposed neck. Rather than match his rival's nobility, however, Gudah's brutish Hal stabs the Welshman without hesitation, then holds his hand over Hotspur's mouth to silence the Welshman's dying words. Hal's triumphant raising of his fists in victory is almost sickening after this display of dishonor, his ignominy matching that of Falstaff, who emerges subsequently to again stab the corpse of Hotspur and claim the battlefield victory as his own. Vinkler's Falstaff then ends the first play - and brings dinner break - with a lilting victory song, an unsettlingly hollow moment that follows hard upon a series of disturbing images.
Whereas the first half begins with shouts from a nightmare, Gaines opens the second half with amplified whimpers. In a surprising doubling, Yando also portrays Rumour, but the potentially stunning concept goes awry in execution: rather than an ironic commentator on the unfolding events, Yando's Rumour is literally a nightmare clown, wearing a black and red jumpsuit and a frizzy white fright wig, and he hams it up in white face with red circles on his cheeks. Rumour re-enacts the Hal-versus-Hotspur duel with slapstick antics, then sticks his tongue in the ear of Northumberland's messenger as the production resumes. The bizarre scene severely detracts from the story, beginning the second half on a crude stumble that Gaines overcomes with a counterpoint of two declining characters, both lit in a now sickly yellow florescent glow. Falstaff is depicted spasming with pain, his face contorted, clutching at his belly, ill with perhaps something like stomach cancer, and then King Henry is shown, hunched over with pain while still in his night clothes, attendants rushing to his side as he nearly collapses. The renewal of the melancholy tone, now colored with the darkness of approaching death, at least offsets the ridiculous clown show that began the second half.
Henry, resting upon the upstage bed with the crown nearby on a pillow, becomes enraged when Gudahl's Hal believes the King has passed and takes the crown in condemnation. With rallying vigor, Yando displays an outraged bluster of anger and hurt that is his finest moment: he wrests the crown from Hal, who tries kneeling then a failed embrace, and Henry finally slams the crown upon Hal's head with a sneering "Henry the Fifth is crowned." When Hal removes the crown, Henry collapses, refusing intimacy one last time before finally embracing his son and heir.
When Gudahl's Hal is crowned Henry V, he wears glittering white beneath his father's heavy robe, and he emerges upstage amid a throng of cheering supporters, including Falstaff, with Vinkler unleashing a triumphant shriek. Poins appears crestfallen, standing opposite Falstaff, as the King passes coldly by, only muttering to Sir John in passing - "fall to thy prayers" - as both Doll and Mistress are carried away from the crowd in a rush of yells and shouts. In an evocatively sad moment, Vinkler's Falstaff winces as if struck, then sags bodily, his arms dropping to his sides. As police constables move him upstage, the lights begin a sad slow fade. The moment, a perfect conclusion for the overall production itself, resonates beyond the performance, with the theatre company itself expanding - due to achieving wondrous on-stage success - and obliged to change its name and relocate to a newly constructed start-of-the-art theatre complex on Navy Pier for their next season.
Despite the melancholy conclusion, after the curtain call the entire cast of twenty-three swarms the stage, and a solitary voice begins singing "The Chimes at Midnight." The other performers join in, and soon the theatre is filled with the triumphant roar of the famous friendship song. This final moment carries with it poignant resonance in a wistful commingling of fond farewells: Hal remembering Falstaff; Hal remembering his father; a company reflecting on its history.