Margaret Gray – LA Times
The Pacific Resident Theatre’s new production of Shakespeare’s “Henry V,” directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, is about as spare and unvarnished as the theater gets. The set consists of a few folding chairs in the blackest, boxiest of conceivable black-box stages.
There’s one prop: a tinny-looking crown. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
Forget the spectacle of the movie versions of Henry V by Laurence Olivier or Kenneth Branagh (each making their film directing debuts). This is a Shakespeare of the imagination, consistent with a text originally conceived for a less than lavish playhouse, the Bard of resourceful invention and indefatigable conceit. Eleven actors, seven in multiple roles, commence with a paperback and loose sides at a reading table that is quickly cast aside as the Chorus (Alex Fernandez) exuberantly conjures up in our fancy the scale of great nations inexorably impelled to conflict upon a sanguinary battlefield. Read more…
Neal Weaver – Arts In LA
Shakespeare spread the story of King Henry V over four plays. We first hear of him, but don’t see him, in Richard II, as Prince Hal, the wastrel prodigal son of King Henry IV. In Henry IV, Part 1, we see Prince Hal’s adventures among the London lowlife and his friendship with the fat rogue Sir John Falstaff. Hal saves the life of King Henry in the war against the rebel lords, kills the warrior Hotspur in single combat, and begins to earn the respect of the king and restore his tainted reputation.
Read more…
Now running through May 11.