HANK CINQ

posted by James Reel

Last night I attended Arizona Theatre Company’s presentation of The Acting Company/Guthrie Theatre’s joint touring production of Shakespeare’s King Henry V. I’m not reviewing it for the Weekly, because it will be long gone by the time the review would hit the street, and I’m disinclined to blog a full review. But I do want to call your attention to it; it’s a good production, and I don’t think tickets are selling very well.

It’s not perfect, and it never quite lives up to its initial coup de théâtre, but it’s a solid and often inventive production that attends as closely to the humor as to the stirring battle cries. Some audience members have objected to the set and costumes, but I think they’re very effective, especially for a touring production. The set is a curving faux-brick wall with sliding panels, evoking the lower reaches of a Medieval tower, and the costumes suggest both the Middle Ages and the World War I period without ever yanking the action out of the original context.

The dozen actors perform valiantly, all in multiple roles except for Matthew Amendt as Henry. Despite my overall approval, I have some doubts about Amendt—not his conception of the character, which righly vacillated between the grasping ambition of a young ruler and the charm and fear of a still boyish ex-wastrel. No, I was distracted by Amendt’s delivery, especially during the first half. The accent itself is unidentifiable, sort of Aussie-French-American, mostly American, but spoken in a way suggesting that English was not his (or Harry’s) first language: Amendt tends to stress or draw out the final syllable of a word here and there. Is he trying to emulate Elizabethan pronunciation? If so, he doesn’t go nearly far enough to reproduce that (to us) now nearly incomprehensible accent. And if this were the intent, the other actors would be doing it, too. Very strange. (Also, William Sturdevant, the very strong actor playing Fluellen, employs a thick brogue that sounds a bit more Scottish than the intended Welsh.)

I see I’ve expended more words on quibbles than praise, but I do recommend this production. It runs only through April 5. The Arizona Theatre Company Web site is not readily forthcoming with info—you need to drill down into layers I can’t link to—but you can start your search here.