Summary 
An often interesting original practices performance, just one of two scheduled, features four musicians who play recorders, bells, and pipes, as well as provide pre-performance madrigal singing. Actors after just twenty hours of rehearsal perform under universal ambient lighting, often directly addressing the audience, and some carry short-version cue scripts while there are frequent shouts of "line!" to an on-stage prompter. The mini-production is a follow-up to the Festival's fully produced 1 Henry IV and utilizes the same scenic design and the same cast within the same building. Interesting in execution, especially due to strong portrayals of the King and Falstaff, but more like a dress rehearsal without the costumes, lighting and production values of Part One.
Design
Directed by Timothy Orr. Scenic Design by Caitlin Ayer. Costume Design Inspired by Hugh Hanson.
Cast
Brendan Milove (Rumour/Page), Bob Buckley (Northumberland/Warwick), Steven Cole Hughes (Hastings), Michael Winters (Falstaff), Peter Simon Hilton (Lord Chief Justice), Tammy L. Meneghini (Mistress Quickly), Sam Sandoe (Bardolph/Silence), Benjamin Bonenfant (Prince Hal), Ian Andersen (Poins), Jamie Ann Romero (Lady Percy/Doll Tearsheet), Sammie Jo Kinnett (Pistol), Sam Gregory (King Henry IV), Geoffrey Kent (Shallow), Joshua Archer (Mouldy/John), Vanessa Morosco (Westmoreland).
Analysis
Timothy Orr, artistic director for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF), directs a limited-run 2 Henry IV with what he calls "original practices." With this, the second of just two scheduled performances, both following the fully-produced 1 Henry IV on the same stage, Orr uses ambient universal lighting and onstage musicians who play a variety of instruments like recorders and pipes and bells as well as provide madrigal-style singing of Elizabethan-era songs. The musicians are seated in a mini-gallery above the stage and wear Elizabethan-style costumes, singing "let a soldier drink" to open the show. Orr's ensemble cast is raw and energetic, having only benefitted from twenty hours of rehearsal time as opposed to the one hundred thirty hours usually afforded a CSF effort - itself a low number for a professional stage production - and they perform with urgency and focus. Some carry scripts with them for quick reference, although these are only cue scripts with their own lines and an indication of prompts for the other roles, and some performers shout out - "line!" - to an onstage prompter who sits with the entire script at stage left. The actors are given license to adjust costuming for comfort - blue jeans, tights, t-shirts are common - and they often address the audience directly.
Orr begins with the induction Rumour, a smiling gentleman in a big purple overcoat and a ski cap. As he describes the concluding events of 1 Henry IV, the actors portraying Hal and Hotspur take the stage, smiling to the audience like puppets in a kids' show, a strange approach considering the mortal combat the two waged at the end of that play. They re-enact their fight incorrectly, cleverly evoking the false rumor that Hotspur had won and the rebels had been victorious over the King's forces, the crown placed on Hotspur's head. They gamely reverse positions to reveal the stark reality 1.1 as Northumberland greets varying messengers. His response is a churlish whipping of his walking stick across the stage. Orr counterpoints the tempestuous Northumberland with Sam Gregory's wan King Henry, even sicklier 3.1, his script in hand as he shuffles along in a red robe and bedroom slippers, black plastic reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. In typical original practices approach, Gregory addresses the audience from downstage, asking if anyone is asleep, then points out individual patrons seated in the audience to wisely advise them: "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."
With Hotspur defeated and the King slowly passing, much of this production's emphasis is on the antics of Sir Jack Falstaff. Michael Winters's amiable old Knight is again a delight, moving from play to play in this year's Festival - both The Merry Wives of Windsor and 1 Henry IV - and he carries this production both dramatically and from a humor perspective. Whereas the first play dwells on Hal and his early-act soliloquies, 2 Henry IV settles early on Winters's Falstaff, who recoils at his own used water pot, then offers a sniff to the front row of the audience - "anybody?" - before bemoaning Hal and the jeans-wearing Poins - "the disease of not listening" - and sipping liberally from a flask: "there's no remedy for this consumption of the purse." His personal ambitions are made clear - "I will turn diseases into commodity" - and by 2.1 he has completely dominated the narrative, fighting off the attempts of Fang and Snare to arrest him, battling their swords with just a stick.
A pair of first-half scenes are set-pieces for Winters's Falstaff, but surprisingly not his interactions with Hal, the focus of the first production. Lady Percy's 2.3 remembrances of her husband Hotspur are made achingly to the audience, then Jamie Ann Romero turns away as if in tears, only to turn back with a sly grin as Doll Tearsheet for 2.4, sliding her black leather jacket suggestively from her shoulders, then untying her hair and shaking it free like a supermodel in a shampoo commercial. Romero's Doll then assumes a prostitute's slouch, squatting like a man on a tavern bench and leaning forward to vomit in a wooden bucket. Winters's Falstaff is of course enamored, zipping his fly as Romero's Doll - wearing fishnet stockings beneath boots - scratches at her crotch, hits and slaps at him, then throws up a little in her mouth and swallows it before clambering into his expansive lap. Poins and Bonenfant's Hal arrive in disguise to set their trap, and Falstaff finds himself with a rival for Doll's infections, pun intended. Sammie Jo Kinnett again portrays Pistol, reprising his roles in the other two CSF productions, but in this outing he is a seedy thief in a black leather vest, fingerless gloves and a sailor's cap. He treats Doll crudely, tossing her over a stool even as she pulls a knife on him, disarming her and holding the blade to her throat. When Falstaff defends her honor, Doll makes a point to put a leg over him and snuggle him, wipe his face, and send the Hostess for a cup of sack while she rubs his back. Hal's trickery plays like an afterthought and is upstaged by Falstaff's rationale for "no abuse!" He chases the Boy with his fingers at his temples like devil's ears, interrupted only by an anachronistic messenger from the King clad in jeans, boots, and a baseball cap. The sad farewells and fearful goodbyes at the prospect of more civil war are not led by Hal, as one might suspect, but by Winters's Falstaff - "farewell Hostess, farewell Doll" - as the Boy hands him his sword.
The 3.2 recruitment of a motley band of soldiers bookends the continued decline of Gregory's King Henry. Shallow and Silence are overplayed to cartoon effect, the former repeating himself three times while wearing hippy-ish goggle sunglasses and argyle socks andsporting very long very gray hair and beard, the latter a disturbing oddball clad in a nun's white habit. Shallow moves with a slow shuffle like a showy Tim Conway bit from The Carol Burnett Show, getting chairs and stools for them while searching for his roster of soldier candidates: "where is the roll, where is the roll?" An audience member finally helps him - "check your hat!" - and the uneasy comedy is enlivened with the arrival of Pistol and Winters's Falstaff, Pistol checking the teeth of the men as if they are horses in a barnyard, and Winters drawing more laughter with one wry line than all the preceding schtick combined: "is thy NAME Mouldy?" The array of soldiers are indeed comical: Wart a trembly little long-haired man who averts his eyes; Feeble an effeminate tailor of women's clothing with a yellow tape measure draped around his neck; and Bullcalf a man wracked with a heavy phlegmy cough that wracks him, and whose handshake offer Falstaff wisely declines. Winters's Falstaff ends the scene and brings intermission, his melancholic "we have heard the chimes at midnight" a more poetic remembrance than Shallow's recollection of him being "as lecherous as a monkey."
Orr's production, still feeling in-development but certainly beyond a mere original practices exercise, ends not with Hal's ascension as King Henry V, but with his brutal and public rejection of his former friend, Falstaff. Much credit to the interesting execution of Elizabethan stage practices but especially to Michael Winters for his memorable triple star-turn as the fat Knight.