Summary 
World-premiere adaptation of the Henry VI trilogy presented outdoors in a lengthy production with thematic focus on Margaret. Well-constructed consolidation of the potentially overwhelming array of characters and complex historic events. Onstage percussion enhances the depiction of the collapse of a weak king's monarchy to the Richard-led Yorks.
Design
Directed by Bruce Colville. Adapted by Jeffrey Sweet. Costumes by Kathryn Rohe. Lights by J. William Ruyle. Set by John Stark. Sound by Woodrow Hood. Original music by Mark Larson.
Cast
Jamie Axtell (Henry VI), Tandy Cronyn (Margaret), Steven Young (Humphrey), Patrick O'Gara (Beaufort), Brad Johnson (Somerset), Eric Kramer (Suffolk), Alex Kitay (Buckingham), Timothy Kane (Exeter), Roderick Peeples (Duke of York), Joshua Coomer (Edward), Dan Wolfe (George), Jay Whittaker (Richard), Deb Heinig (Eleanor).
Analysis
The Illinois Shakespeare Festival presents a world premiere adaptation by Chicago writer Jeffrey Sweet of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy. Sweet entitles the play, The Falcon's Pitch, after the laudatory lines regarding hunting birds - "But what a point, my lord, your falcon made/And what a pitch she flew above the rest" - and Henry VI's peacekeeping spirit. Sweet centers the copious three plays' worth of action around the character of Margaret. Sweet adapted the play with Equity-actress Tandy Cronyn in mind to portray Margaret, who becomes Henry VI's wife, the Marquis of Suffolk's mistress, and ultimately the "curser" of the Duke of Gloucester in Richard III.
Sweet divides the sequence of events into three one-hour acts. Cronyn displays a striking progression as the raven-haired Margaret traverses the physical comedy, youthful defiance, and political romance of the first act to the angry power-mongering and battlefield valor of the second-act, and finally to the tragedy and defeats that bring the wild-eyed cursing of the final third-act scenes. Director Bruce Colville also costumes Cronyn in a progression, adorning her with each passing scene. To start, she reveals her "tyger's heart" in a simple gown as she fights and resists the English, then adds a necklace and a royal coverlet after her marriage to the painfully young Henry. She then dons armor and a heavy sword for the second-act battle sequences, her long hair bound in a tight pony-tail. By the conclusion, Cronyn embodies the "Amazonian troll" who rails in rags against the Yorkists who have defeated her.
Colville sets The Falcon's Pitch in historical period. The outdoor stage of Ewing Manor is brick and stonework that crawls with invading vines and sprawls of barren tree branches. The stage's three arches are made to seem to tilt as if they are near collapse, just as Henry's Plantaganet kingdom teeters on the edge of ruin. Netting along the edge of the stage is ragged and uneven, as if England's shoreline is damaged and corroded. The gloomy color scheme of purple and black seems even murkier after nightfall during the second and third acts.
Colville accelerates the pace of the play to speed over the at-times overwhelming detail of events and passing characters. A mini-stage slides from beneath the gallery to provide a location for brief and rapidly paced vignettes, such as the discovery of Gloucester dead in his bed, or the Cardinal's dying gasps on his own deathbed. The second act concludes ominously as the emotionally defeated Henry is pulled back beneath the gallery, still seated upon his throne. Three-piece onstage percussion signals elapsing time and character entrances, and provides appropriately militaristic rhythms and drum-beats.
A supporting cast of thirty portray the plethora of characters that surround Margaret. Eric Kramer portrays the Marquis of Suffolk, who seduces Margaret and then weds her to the King for his own political purposes. Kramer's Suffolk wears black tights and a dull reddish coverlet. He appears following the opening sequence, which is a slow, almost dance-like beginning that suddenly quickens with Margaret's shrill scream into frenzied swordplay. Suffolk pursues Margaret across stage from 5.3 of 1H6, which leaves more than four acts from that play cut. After he and his henchmen, black-hooded and grimly robed like reapers, wed her to Henry, there comes an amusingly half-hearted cry of "long live Queen Margaret" from unimpressed townspeople.
Memorable minor characterizations include a red-robed and red-faced Cardinal Beaufort, wearing rings on both hands and brandishing a walking stick as if he will strike, and the portly, yellow-robed protector, Gloucester, all puffing power until he quietly must surrender the staff he knows his enemies covet and have won from him. Gloucester's downfall is brought about as a result of the evocative conjuring scenes with the witch Margery Jordan. Amid rumbles of sound-effect thunder and flashes of strobe-like lightning, a spark-throwing Bolingbroke conjures an evil spirit from the writhing witch.
The Duke of York is played with stout anger, concluding the first act with his impressive 2H6 3.1.331 "steel thy fearful thoughts" soliloquy. York's downfall in the third act is memorable, as Margaret crowns him with a paper-crown, then has henchmen bind him by the hands and drive him to his knees so he is all but drawn-and-quartered onstage.
Also notable, especially due to the central presence of Cronyn's Margaret, is the portrayal of Eleanor. Almost a younger version of Margaret, both in appearance - with her long black hair and elegant but cold demeanor - and in ambitious machinations, Eleanor spits her words like poison, especially hard consonants, as when she chides the kneeling-in-prayer Henry VI, at whom "the giddy multitudes do point."
Jamie Axtell plays the purple-robed and mop-topped King Henry VI as appropriately boyish. Apart from a usually blank countenance, his expressions are dumbfounded blinks or self-absorbed smirks. Although sympathetically portrayed, he reveals himself more as a weak King than a "blessed peacemaker." He moves in a sleepy shuffle and appears slight and fragile, especially when near the seething Margaret or the blustering Suffolk. He is even politely requested to remove himself from the battlefield because his general-wife fares better when he is not present. The "frowns, words, and threats" (3H6 1.1.72) with which Henry intends to wage war seem feeble when compared with the venom and vigor of the Yorkist Richard.
Jay Whittaker plays the crook-backed Richard with a scenery-chewing, vigorous venom that empowers a production that may have flagged with a less dynamic performer. Whittaker, black-haired and black-eyed, wears a goatee and black clothing, including black armor and black boots, and he wields a pair of shining silver swords. He walks leaning forward upon the two sword points like a four-legged animal, and he prowls with menacing, almost spider-like movements of man and blade. His murder of Rutland seems especially savage: the helpless boy is head-locked from behind and held in mid-air as Richard slits his throat. While Richard watches with fascination, the boy kicks and struggles for painful moments until his movements stop with harrowing finality.
The numerous battle sequences are accompanied with pounding drums, fierce shouts invoking Saint George, and battle cries of pain and exertion. Sword play and skirmishes are minimal, although there is much yelling and rushing on and off stage. Colville evokes the climactic act three battle from 3H6 very differently, beginning it in slow motion amid a thick billow of stage-fog and a rumble of sound effects that shakes the theatre's seats. Near the end, Henry VI emerges from beneath the gallery, still seated tenuously upon the throne. Henry observes the scattered battlefield dead, including the mirroring scenes in which a son realizes he has killed his father, and another father realizes he has killed his own son. The two scenes carry enormous dramatic weight and do not need to be played as broadly as they are by the actors, but in a clever staging, Colville uses the same two actors to portray both fathers and both sons, and the two men simply alternate from the quick to the dead.
The Falcon's Pitch concludes with a series of chilling images. Cronyn's "she-wolf of France" begins to become the curser with the news of the murder of her "spiteful cub." Her cry of "kill me too" is quickly answered by Richard's "marry, and shall," and the York brother must be restrained from assaulting her. As she rails against the Yorks, Cronyn's Margaret is carried bodily from the stage, kicking and screaming. In a defining moment, Margaret manages - if for but a moment - to grasp the throne, but she merely pulls it over with a crash as she is carried off to be exiled to France.
Richard - after an ironic and portentous whisper of "suspicion haunts the guilty mind" - makes a slow descent from the gallery like a bird of prey. At center stage, Whittaker gently kneels beside Henry to mock the King's prayer, embraces him from the side with creepy sincerity, then stabs the deposed Henry twice: "die, prophet." In the final image, Whittaker's Richard circles, then briefly touches, the coveted throne as the lights fade out.
Like Blood of a Nation, another 1998 world premiere adaptation of the Henry VI plays - this one by Jeffrey Wechsler - that debuted at Chicago's Bailiwick Repertory Theatre, Sweet's play is an ambitious attempt to consolidate the trilogy. Whereas Blood of a Nation benefited from a clear depiction of the characters and conflicts and a focus on the historical context, The Falcon's Pitch benefits from the focus on Margaret and her political duels with Beaufort, Gloucester, and the Yorks, as well as her more intimate battles with Suffolk and Henry VI. Interestingly, both playwright's chose to eliminate the scenes involving the John Cade rebellion, along with its 4.2 trademark line from 2H6: "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.16, No.4, Fall 1998.