Summary 
An excellent Falstaff buoys this coming-of-page political history that focuses more on Prince Hal's growth and his friendship with the old knight than the influence of his father the King. Final preview of a touring production features liberal audience interaction, strong performances of contemporary music, and a young but talented ensemble ably playing a slew of supporting roles.
Design
Directed by Jim Warren. Costume design by Erin M. West.
Cast
David Millstone (King Henry), Patrick Earl (Prince Hal), Bridget Rue (Prince John/Lady Mortimer), Emily Joshi-Powell (Westmoreland/York/Mistress Quickly), Stephanie Holladay Earl (Blunt/Lady Percy), Russell Daniels (Worcester/Gadshill), Colin Ryan (Northumberland/Glendower/Sir Michael/Bardolph), Patrick Midgley (Hotspur), Joey Ibanez (Mortimer/ Douglas/Peto), Fernando Lamberty (Vernon/Poins), Rick Blunt (Falstaff).
Analysis
Jim Warren's final preview of Henry IV Part 1 is performed at the American Shakespeare Center's Blackfriars Playhouse by a cast in four primary roles with seven supporting actors playing eighteen speaking parts. The ensemble, readying for a touring production, all wear black, most sporting combat boots, and almost all are at center stage a half hour before curtain, performing a set of contemporary songs with at least some relevance to the production. The first song is "All the Things I've Done" by The Killers, a soulful protest song with, well, a killer refrain - "I've got a soul but I'm not a soldier" - followed by ensemble member Rick Blunt amiably greeting the arriving audience - "welcome, everybody!" - and encouraging concession and raffle ticket sales. After a change of singers, the cast take on first "I'm a Little Divided" by The Foo Fighters - "it's times like these you learn to live again" - then Garth Brooks' "I Got Friends in Low Places" with the whole cast singing after an encouraging, "everybody!" to the audience. "No Surrender" by Bruce Springsteen segues into The Beatles' "Carry That Weight," then Blunt describes the theater and the production style ("let me be blunt with you") from the fourth wall to their early signature style of including all the actors onstage all the time, to the more typical ASC features: no extra lighting or sound amplification, seats right onstage, no scenic design except properties. The final song is performed solo by Patrick Earl, who will play prig Prince Hal, and the tune has particular resonance with the character. Earl's Hal plays an acoustic guitar at stage center - "take me to the alehouse, take me to the whorehouse" - his father the King arriving through the audience to sit and frown with disapproval from stage right, wearing a red doublet over black garments and a golden crown. The members of the court onstage all pointedly - and poignantly - turn their backs to the prodigal prince. Hal concludes his song with a graphic image - "if I vomit keep me off my back" - and the production proper begins.
Warren's young and energetic ensemble interacts with the audience throughout, though none so freely and easily as Blunt's gregarious Falstaff. Blunt expertly combines the twinkling eyes, portly build, and smoker's laugh of the knight into a remarkable portrait of a clinging old friend. When Hal steals a purse from a young lady seated onstage in a Gallant's Stool 1.2, Blunt's Falstaff confiscates it and appears to rifle through the bag, coming up with a Kit Kat candy bar that he offers to share with the lady, then refuses in a selfish snit, eating the chocolate himself. During the 2.2 Gads Hill robbery, he leans way out toward the audience from downstage, holding a lantern and shaking just a little with excitement and fear, calling for Poins and checking the faces of the audience. When he admits the magnitude of his fright - "I may break my wind" - he turns to apologize to the women seated behind him on the Gallants' Stools. Blunt's Falstaff fuses superb Elizabethan diction with improvisational talent: during 3.2 he proudly shows the front row his big hairy belly ("do I not dwindle?") before absently picking lint from his navel, and he tries a comical escape attempt 5.3 by trying (and failing badly) to climb over the wooden rail into the Lords' Chairs at the side of the stage.
Henry gives his 1.1 opening address with most of the cast seated onstage but Hal with Poins beside him in the front row of the audience, stage right. Hal soon rises and jumps to the stage, now the Boar's Head tavern, and discovers Blunt's snoring old Falstaff asleep behind the dark upstage curtains, his shirt hiked above his stomach, his pants balled around his ankles, his Pokemon underwear clearly visible. Falstaff struggles with walking, mostly due to the pants situation, and he listens to Hal while pretending to urinate in a corner, and by the time the scene is over, he is asleep again, and Earl's Hall pauses before exiting to kiss him tenderly atop the head.
Poins plays as more a princely sidekick than Falstaff, being younger and fitter and therefore more Hal-like. He leaps to the stage 1.2, ignoring Falstaff's outstretched hand to embrace Hal, then mocking the old knight's animated gestures behind his back. During the Gads Hill robbery, he lies upstage in wait beside Earl's Hal, both like modern gangbangers in green-hooded sweatshirts, sunglasses at night, and wielding police batons. Falstaff and his crew, women's nylons stretched over their heads, execute the robbery and celebrate, the diminutive Peto "hiking" a coin purse to Falstaff then jumping to chest-bump the old knight with such energy he knocks himself down. Blunt's Falstaff becomes so frightened by the robbery at the hands of the masked Hal and Poins that he sprawls to the ground and refuses to budge, and the two friends must help him stand so he can flee.
Patrick Midgley's muscular Hotspur is presented as a fiery young warrior, much like Hal once crowned, but without the dynamic - and Machiavellian - sense of power politics and public image. His 1.3 agreement to surrender his hard-fought-for prisoners to Henry so the King can profit from their ransom is a devastating loss, and he paces and interrupts his uncles, stopping once to yell the name of a rival to the throne - "Mortimer!" - in the face of David Millstone, the actor impassively portraying King Henry, seated on stage and observing but not taking part. Hotspur's 2.3 interaction with Kate, she watching in a long robe as he slowly dresses himself, ends with them launching at each for a long and passionate kiss.
The 2.4 confrontation between Hal and Falstaff is the crux of the play and a highlight of this production. Hal and Poins await the return of Falstaff and his men by toying with Francis the drawer and directly addressing Hotspur within the audience: "how many have you killed today?" Blunt's Falstaff does not disappoint, charging in with banged-up weapon and armor - "a plague of all cowards!" - and ballooning the number of opponents he has felled from two to four, then to seven and nine and eleven. Boasting of his valor - "I am as valiant as Hercules!" - he sets himself up as the play-King to reprimand Earl's Hal, not a wise maneuver, but his bar brothers clap and chant "Hercules" as Hal pushes him to the top of the table. Blunt's Falstaff uses a pillow as a crown, silencing the entire tavern by hazarding a mention of the sore subject of the King - "ooooh!" - and the chant switches to "Falstaff! Falstaff!" as the knight makes his case beside the fact he is too big a man to easily kneel. Earl's Hal, while initially playful, covering the ears of a young lady on a Gallant's Stool to protect her from the phrase "a whoremaster," becomes unsmilingly serious for the rest of the scene, announcing quietly his current and future condemnation of Falstaff as a thief - "I do; I will" - and after Peto conceals Falstaff's snores from the Sheriff, Hal again kisses the sleeping knight as the production pauses for intermission.
The intermission includes four more contemporary songs, providing not much of a break or a rest for the performers. They begin with Incubus - "whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open eyes and open arms" - to a whistling conclusion, then follow up with the stomp-and-clap rhythm of "Stronger Than Rome" by K'Naan: "when I get older I will be stronger, they'll call me freedom just like a waving flag." A wonderful barbershop quartet cover of "Right Here Right Now" by Van Halen features some excellent harmonizing - "it means everything" - but the concluding anti-war anthem "Some Nights" by Fun is surely their best musical performance. The whole ensemble sings well and maintains the rhythmic power-drumming of the original, though cleaning up the lyrics a bit for a family audience: "who the hell wants to die alone all dried up in the desert sun." One by one the cast stops singing and exits, removing a layer of harmony and decreasing the numbers onstage like passing soldiers, until only the guitarists and a lead singer stand poignantly alone for the conclusion.
Warren resumes with 3.1 and the rebels, Midgely's bellicose Hotspur upset with his share: he shouts "I have forgot the map!" and has an audience member onstage hold up a map of England as they divide the country. He flirts with Kate, who playfully slaps him during the Welsh song sung by Mortimer's wife then with a big coy smile rushes upstage to join him in their bedchamber. Despite setbacks from the strutting Scot leader, played big and loud by the same diminutive actor playing Peto at the Boar's Head, and the 4.1 excuse that Hotspur's father is "grievous sick," Midgely's Hotspur rallies the rebels - "we live to tread on kings!" - who exit with pumping fists and shouts of "Esperance!"
Earl's Hal continues his transformation into a King 3.2, kneeling before his father and heatedly discussing "the shadow of succession." Millstone's lean and mean Henry moves as if to embrace his son but instead just grips him by the shoulders. Warren contrasts the somber tone against Falstaff's wild dance with the Hostess, swinging her wildly about the stage as he grudgingly agrees to "forgive" her. With the 4.2 calls to civil war, Henry's army dons scarlet red over black while Falstaff - the sense of light-hearted comedy again jarring - outfits his motley crew, referring to audience members as his rag-tag band of assorted cannon fodder. Blunt's knight even picks out a quite affable onstage audience member to stand and be ridiculed as a soldier, and his 5.1 diatribe against valor - "what is honor?" - follows on the heels of pounding war drums. Blunt's Falstaff exhorts the audience for response to his pragmatic cowardice, and his exit draws spontaneous applause.
Warren's concluding scenes are staged with an exceptional theatricality considering the sparse staging and universal lighting, Douglas's furious one-on-one combat with a look-alike King Henry - won by dramatic pistol shot - followed by Hal's rallying of Falstaff but discovering his hip holster contains just a flask. The scenes converge 5.4 as Douglas tries to shoot Hal but apparently wounds Falstaff, who dramatically collapses as if shot stage right. The conclusion comes after Hal defeats Hotspur in single combat - "thou has robbed me of my youth" - with some young women in the audience obviously disturbed by the fall of Midgley's matinee-idol-buff Hotspur, their cries of "oh no" audible. Earl's Hal completes Hotspur's dying sentence - "for worms" - and bids a final good-bye to Falstaff: "poor Jack, farewell." Blunt's Falstaff literally has the last laugh - "how this world is given to lying!" - taking credit for the crushing of the rebellion's leader (and its spirit), just moments before Henry's final remarks, ending a simply but effectively staged character study slash history lesson.