THE CHRONICLES OF KING HENRY VI: PART I, PART II
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| Nicholas Kepros. |
Reviews of live theatre being impossible during these days of the pandemic, THEATRE'S LEITER SIDE
is pleased to provide instead accounts of previous theatre
seasons--encompassing the years 1970-1975-for theatre-hungry readers. If you'd
like to know the background on how this previously unpublished series came to
be and what its relationship is to my three The Encyclopedia of the New
York Stage volumes (covering every New York play, musical, revue, and
revival between 1920 and 1950), please check the prefaces to any of the entries
beginning with the letter “A.” See the list at the end of the current entry.
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| David Hooks, Gretchen Corbett. |
Henry VI, one of the most
rarely produced Shakespeare plays, was given in its entirety (albeit edited) in
this Central Park production so that Part I and a portion of Part II were
combined in one play, a portion of Part II and all of Part III were made into a
separate work. The two plays were given in rotating repertory, which included a
third play, Richard III, with all
going under the single title of The Wars
of the Roses.
Spectacle was a preeminent concern of this mounting. The warring sides
in these brutal and bloody panoramas of 15th-century English history were
differentiated by the White rose worn by Yorkists and the Red one by
Lancastrians.
A respectable press, if not a very excited one, greeted the effort.
John Simon, for one, was quite dissatisfied with the whole thing. He thought
the all-important battle scenes mismanaged and the production lacking in a
potent “overarching vision” “The sword play is staged in sluggish slow motion.
. . . [The armies] are scraggly and few, in rubber armor, and they would not
case a lone Central Park mugger off his prey.” He flagellated the acting as “amateurish”
and the directing as less than mediocre. But Clive Barnes felt differently,
saying the show had all “the excitement of a space-age saga.” Simon was aghast
that Barnes and several others had liked the production and claimed that Shakespeare
in the Park “must be saved . . . [both] from itself and from ignorant reviewers
who would kill it with kindness.”
The very large cast included Charles Durning as the Mayor of London,
Robert Burr as Lord Talbot, David Hooks as the Early of Warwick, Gretchen
Corbett as Joan La Pucelle, Paul Sparer as Richard Platagenet, Ronny Cox as
Vernon, Nicholas Kepros as Henry VI, Patricia Falkenheim as Eleanor, Duchess of
Gloucester, Bette Heinritze as Margaret Jourdain, to cite just a handful of the
more recognizable names. However, one of the many actors in the “ensemble” was
a very young Kevin Kline.
Henry VI had never been given a
full New York revival during the 20th century. Parts of it were interpolated in
other productions, beginning with the use of four scenes in the John Barrymore Richard III of 1920, but that was its
premiere New York staging of record.
Previous entries:
Abelard and
Heloise
Absurd Person
Singular
AC/DC
“Acrobats”
and “Line”
The Advertisement/
All My Sons
All Over
All Over Town
All the Girls Came
Out to Play
Alpha Beta
L’Amante Anglais
Ambassador
American Gothics
Amphitryon
And Miss Reardon
Drinks a Little
And They Put
Handcuffs on the Flowers
And Whose Little
Boy Are You?
Anna K.
Anne of Green
Gables
Antigone
Antiques
Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead
Applause
Ari
As You Like It
Augusta
The Au Pair Man
Baba Goya [Nourish the Beast]
The Ballad of Johnny Pot
Barbary Shore
The Bar that Never Closes
The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
The Beauty Part
The Beggar’s Opera
Behold! Cometh the Vanderkellens
Be Kind to People Week
Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill
Bette Midler’s Clams on a Half-Shell Revue
Black Girl
Black Light Theatre of Prague
Black Picture Show
Black Sunlight
The Black Terror
Black Visions
Les Blancs
Blasts and Bravos: An Evening with H,L.
Mencken
Blood
Bluebeard
Blue Boys
Bob and Ray—The Two and Only
Boesman and Lena
The Boy Who Came to Leave
Bread
A Breeze from the Gulf
Brief Lives
Brother Gorski
Brothers
Bullshot Crummond
Bunraku
The Burnt Flower Bed
Butley
Button, Button
Buy Bonds, Buster
The Cage
Camille
Candide (1)
Candide (2)
The Candyapple
Captain Brassbound’s Conversion
The Caretaker
La Carpa de los Raquichis
The Carpenters
The Castro Complex
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The Changing Room
Charles Abbott and Son
Charley’s Aunt
Charlie Was Here and Now He’s Gone
Chemin de Fer
The Cherry Orchard
The Chickencoop Chinaman
The Children
Children! Children!
Children in the Rain
Children of the Wind
The Children’s Mass
A Chorus Line