Summary 
Outdoor production with a grotesque rather than sympathetic Falstaff loses focus on characterization after the first act, instead detailing the civil war against the Percys. The second act, with lengthy and stylized combat sequences, overwhelms the central story of Prince Hal and his relationships with Falstaff, the King, and Hotspur.
Design
Directed by Kathryn Long. Costumes by Judith Lundberg. Sets and lights by Phillip J. Hickox. Music by Paul Hastil. Fights by Lee E. Ernst.
Cast
Paul Bentzen (Henry Percy/Bardolph), Sarah Day (Lady Mortimer), Lee E. Ernst (Harry Percy), Stephen Hemming (Sir John Falstaff), Cole Hornaday (Lancaster/Francis), Charles Huston (Peto), Michael LaGue (King Henry IV), Valeri Lantz (Lady Percy), Bill McCallum (Hal), Dai Parker-Gwilliam (Westmorland/Vintner), Robert Spencer (Owen Glendower/Gadshill), Craig Wallace (Ned Poins), Angela Yannon (Mistress Quickly).
Analysis
American Players Theatre's outdoor stage - grayed, weather beaten, and deep within a Wisconsin wood - is enhanced by cricket chirps and bird calls as well as by a continual flurry of bats and, on this particular evening, an occasional meteor overhead. The company's 1 Henry IV is meagerly set, however, with just a wooden throne to represent the court of King Henry IV and only a table with mismatched chairs opposite an overturned crate to stand for the interior of the Boar's Head tavern. Director Kathryn Long chooses to emphasize characterization in this production, which, in the first half, focuses on the conflict of opposing lifestyles confronting the young Prince of Wales, although Hal's decision has already been made, as Bill McCallum illustrates with Hal's apologetic opening soliloquy. The unappealingly Machiavellian element that underlies the Prince's relationship with Falstaff is diminished by the genuine affinity he shows for the fat knight: McCallum - whose youthfully handsome Hal is tanned and lean, sporting curly blond hair and a ruddy, half-unbuttoned tunic - portrays the Prince as clinging to the spirited camaraderie of a deep and mutual friendship. Although he admires the nobility and honor of Hotspur, Hal returns to the morally corrupt company of Falstaff and the Boar's Head denizens, savoring the irresponsible recklessness of his youth. Although Hal's solemn declaration of his princely intent to his father - stiffly regal and somber-voiced - is portrayed by McCallum as sincere, in the immediately following scene the Prince is depicted making an obstreperous farewell appearance at the Boar's Head, days before the onslaught of civil war, delighting in his role as leader of a dancing train of drunkards.
Stephen Hemming portrays the aging, grotesquely obese Falstaff with the aid of considerable padding and extensive make-up. With an enormous belly that sags almost to his knees, Hemming waddles about the stage with comical grunts of exertion. Make-up renders the long-bearded Sir John hideously ugly, deforming his facial features and giving him deeply set, pig-like eyes. The phlegmatic Falstaff features patchy baldness and long white hair that is thin and straggly, and he is portrayed by Hemming with a slew of horrific vocal mannerisms, including slurs, snorts, and sniffles, and an abundance of rasping coughs. Despite Falstaff's physical repugnance, however, Hemming manages to depict the sixtyish knight for sympathy: dressed in tattered rags and wearing fingerless gloves, limping and wracked with sundry body pains, Hemming's Falstaff hopes desperately to assure material comforts for his final years. Falstaff's fondness for Hal is apparent in the gentler tone Hemming employs when speaking to the Prince as well as in his affectionate mannerisms and the earnestness of his discussions of friendship. Conversely, Hemming presents Falstaff as being ill-tempered with other characters. During the Gad's Hill robbery, Falstaff shouts brutal threats and at one point knocks a fleeing victim to the ground with a sumo-wrestler-like blow from his tremendous belly.
Sir John's fears are effectively revealed in the Boar's Head scene, during which Falstaff and Hal alternate play-acting as the King. Perched high upon a table with an oversized pillow as a crown and his self-battered sword as a scepter, the irascible knight engages in a shouting match with the red-nosed Bardolph and kicks aside the frantically flustered Francis before addressing his "son" Hal. McCallum good-naturedly assumes the role moments later, also donning the pillow as his crown, and in a placating mood, he adopts a preposterously thick accent and a comically stern tone. McCallum's sudden seriousness with the issue of Falstaff's rejection is the most dramatic moment of this production: McCallum removes the pillow and drops the accent, now the Prince and heir-apparent rather than the play-King, and speaking of absolute rejection in his natural voice, he looks Falstaff directly in the eyes and says, "I do, I will." Falstaff's shock is apparent in Hemming's shaken physical reaction, and his blustering demand to be heard is poignantly futile and completely ignored.
Hotspur, Falstaff's hot-blooded physical and moral contrast, is played with a manic intensity that conceptually works well for the character, but is often peevish in execution, due to the actor's slight physicality and querulous voice. Hotspur, clad in shiny black leather pants and vest, black boots, and a white shirt that billows at the sleeves, wears permed, shoulder-length brown hair that seems too youthful for him; as a result, the fiery Welshman resembles an aging and petulant modern rock star rather than a young and impassioned medieval warrior. Nevertheless, several scenes work effectively through the seething energy of the performance: after his rebuke from Henry over the Mortimer issue, Hotspur prowls the stage, angrily flailing his arms, and, with a backward kick, he overturns the King's throne, visually revealing the underlying significance of his rebellious words; and when he receives the message that his father is ill and will not join the rebel forces, Hotspur in fuming frustration rips the note apart and whips the scraps of paper around the stage, realizing moments later - with ingenuous disbelief - that he has not read the entire message and must gather and piece together the scattered scraps. Even Hotspur's relationship with Lady Percy is presented as emotionally volatile, the couple's mutual exasperation evident despite their obvious affection for one another; at one point, the plucky Kate chases, tackles, and arm-locks a huffily exiting Hotspur. Hotspur's excessive sense of duty is exposed as overshadowing even his marriage, however, as he is depicted stalking off-stage to prepare for the rebellion, abandoning his sobbing wife.
The Earl of Douglas, glowering and beastly, looms over the other actors, especially the comparatively slight Hotspur; with long red hair and mustache, the head-banded Scot is grotesquely scarred, and he brandishes a spear with impatient menace. The muscular Douglas uses an effectively thick Scottish growl, unlike the surprisingly unaccented Welshman, Glendower. Douglas' visceral stage presence and Hotspur's athleticism dominate the painstakingly choreographed second-half battle sequences. The detailed depiction of the combat, however, overwhelms and considerably slows the production, which to this point is effectively driven by its characters, especially Hemming's memorable Falstaff. The initial battle is staged in almost cinematic slow-motion: with exaggeratedly slow movements, a half-dozen individual conflicts are waged, with each set of warriors entering the theatre from a different location, gradually converging at center stage. Accompanied by martial music, and amid a swirling haze of atmospheric dry-ice, the combatants clash in semi-darkness punctuated by static bursts of red and white light, as King Henry looks on from a spot-lit platform upstage. Once the major characters begin their single combats, however, the pace suddenly quickens to frenetic real-time and the battles are less expressionistic and more realistic. Initially striking, the sudden increase in speed and activity effectively relates the mortal dangers of combat, but the fights are staged with an excess of yelling and chasing, and there are simply too many one-on-one encounters to sustain interest. After Douglas' extended individual fights with Blunt, Henry, and Hal, and following his comic defeat of the woefully overmatched Falstaff (who is saved when Douglas' apparent death-blow strikes his concealed bottle of sack), the production's ultimate confrontation between Hotspur and Hal is wearisome and anti-climactic. The fights themselves are repetitive and overly long, less interesting than the well-drawn characters established in the production's first half, and less entertaining as well.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.11, No.4, Fall 1993.