Two very different reviews for Nova’s current production of Shakespeare’s War of the Roses… The consensus: Ambitious, fearless, enterprising, innovative, and fun are the words Houston critics are using to describe Nova’s latest escapade!
Where:Barnevelder Movement/Arts Complex, 2201 Preston, 713-623-4033.
Details:Through July 19. $10-$15.
Group A (Thursdays and Saturdays) includes Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2 and Henry V. Group B (Fridays and Saturdays) includes Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VI Part 3 and Richard III. That’s a library full of English history to plow through. Any one of these complex dramas is complicated enough, with murderous fathers, sons, uncles, brothers, wives and cousins all conspiring for top dog. That the enterprise works at all is some sort of theatrical miracle.
Think of Nova’s cycle as Elizabethan cabaret. The eight directors have conjured a little bit of everything and something for everyone. Yes, it’s uneven, and a pair of editing shears should be employed, but the evening holds together. That, of course, has a lot to do with Shakespeare. No matter how you slice and dice him, the Bard remains supreme. Just to hear snippets is pleasure enough. How often have you seen any part of Henry VI?
The opener, Richard II, directed by Jennifer Decker and written by John Harvey, sets the template but is the bleakest. Dispirited and haunted, Richard II (Ryan Kelly) slumps on his black throne contemplating his cousin Bolingbroke’s fateful return from exile, which predestines the king’s doom. In the background, a series of photographs ironically mocks the worn-out king, while The Other Richard (Eddie Chevez) prophetically smashes vases containing the dynastic red rose (the House of Lancaster) and white rose (the House of York) with a croquet mallet. Kelly’s look and attitude is the perfect picture of absolute power corrupted from within.
“A Little More Mascara” from La Cage Aux Folles ushers in Henry IV Part 1. Director Sara Patterson spins her tale with cheeky grunge as the “Bolingbroke Beauties” put on a show. Swishy Henry (Jon Harvey) wears a tiny tiara, pearl earrings and a Mummer’s peacock headpiece as he rails against the opposition and his unprincely, wayward son Hal (Eddie Chevez), who’s enthralled by the drunken wastrel Falstaff (Justin Dunsford, so lusty and lewd he must have stepped right off the Globe stage). Hal pulls up his spandex bodice as Hotspur (Bobby Haworth), Northumberland (Sean Patrick Judge) and Worcester (Miranda Herbert) prance around backstage, waiting for their chance to strike. As in Carrie, a bucket of slo-mo blood douses the fairy king, but the rebellious villains are dutifully dispatched.
Director Antonio Aguires III captures his vision of Henry IV Part 2 on film in what can only be described as soft gay porn. What this boy-beds-boy tale has to do with any part of Henry IV is beyond me, unless it’s Aguires’s weird take on Hal (Bobby Haworth) and Falstaff’s (Michael Dunsworth) friendship and whoring. Not even Shakespeare suggested such a sexual pairing, but the bedsheets rumple artistically, lines of coke disappear up noses and there are lots of time-lapse shots of flowers opening. As flames lick across the screen, the movie bleeds into live action with some uncomfortably explicit, fiery violence, which might suggest the rebel leaders are treacherously executed by Prince John. Who knows? You can’t tell the players without a program, so this is anyone’s call.
Henry VI Part 3, directed by Philip Hayes, is anchored by Sean Patrick Judge’s knockout comic performance as Margaret, the great she-wolf of France. It’s the most consistent piece in the cycle and plain laugh-out-loud funny. In beret and greasy limp wig, a Gauloises hanging damply from his mouth, Judge vamps it up gloriously. When Margaret has York in her power, she taunts him and waves her cigarette like Cruella de Vil: “I’ll kill you with secondhand smoke.” Then there’s the Lady Grey blowup doll and Henry (Brittny Bush) in exile inside a cardboard box, serenaded by a herd of sock-puppet sheep. It’s so delightfully silly — Shakespeare would applaud.
Although Richard III is played for laughs with its “R” bling jewelry and Saturday Night Fever poses, Judge as Shakespeare’s first complex villain is most serious indeed. Oh, Richard can boogie down with his fine Chicas (Elissa Levitt and Brittny Bush) and woo a distraught Anne (Miranda Herbert) until she’s putty in his hot hands, but he leaves a long line of corpses. He gels his hair, kohls his eyes and reddens his lips, but don’t be fooled by the vanity — he’ll stab you with his eyebrow pencil. Abetted by director Amy Hopper, Judge gives a full-bodied performance — it’s chilling, precise and cuts to the bone.
Houston Chronicle Review:
Eight Shakespeare plays in one day, really
By EVERETT EVANS
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
You’ll never believe what I did on Saturday.
Eight (count ‘em!) Shakespeare history plays, all in one day:
Richard II; Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2; Henry V; Henry VI, Parts 1, 2 and 3; and Richard III.
No, I wasn’t visiting the Royal Shakespeare Company. Even the RSC would be hard-pressed to fit eight plays into a single day.
Yet the feat is being achieved by Nova Arts Project, one of Houston’s youngest and most enterprising alternative troupes, with its current War of the Roses Cycle.
Perhaps one should say ….achieved in a fashion.”
In truth, Nova Arts is not presenting full-length versions but a half-hour digest of each play, with eight directors given free rein to devise whatever take on the material he or she desires.
Nova Arts directors Clinton and Amy Hopper figured that, since the plays tell the ongoing story of the struggle for the English crown in the 15th century, why not combine them in a single project? Because doing the eight in their entirety would prove too unwieldy, the project offers abridged versions arranged in two programs.
Group A (the first four plays) and Group B (the remaining ones) can be seen on successive evenings or in a matinee/evening marathon on Saturdays.
Nova Arts did something similar with its 2006 Oedipus3, combining abridged versions of Sophocles’ three Oedipus tragedies, as a single program – with interesting and sometimes potent results.
Yet in this case, while giving credit for the ambitious nature of the project, it must be reported that the company’s reach has far exceeded its grasp.
Allowing each director to do his own thing may be great for the group’s creative freedom, but it doesn’t serve Shakespeare or the audience’s need for a coherent, dramatically effective take on this far-flung material. With no continuity between the sections, the plays remain uninvolving.
Even those who arrive with a knowledge of the plays (all but Henry V and Richard III being among the Bard’s least familiar works) will have a tough time figuring out what’s happening in some stretches.
A couple of the plays are treated in straightforward fashion, extensively trimmed but true to the originals. Others are mangled in such extreme styles as to become unrecognizable; they might be exercises in an ….Interpreting Shakespeare” workshop. Still others are turned into outright travesties in a ….Look, we’re being cute with Shakespeare!” approach that comes off amateurish, precious and self-indulgent – the kind of thing best appreciated by friends and associates of the participants.
Director Jennifer Decker’s take on Richard II reveals the scruffy, actors’ workshop approach: four players in street clothes (but wearing crowns), with an everyday delivery of the lines. Sardonically captioned slides back the action.
Director Sara Patterson gives the first of the wacky treatments to Henry IV, Part 1 – as a drag show, with the guys in dresses and wigs and everyone camping it up to the max. At least that explains why the opening music is A Little More Mascara from the Jerry Herman musical La Cage Aux Folles. (First Hello, Dolly! tunes in Wall-E and now a La Cage number in a Shakespearean cycle – do I hear a trend?)
Antonio Aguries III offers Henry IV, Part 2 as a short film, replete with a nicely done (if clichéd) title sequence set against time-lapse photography of flowers blooming. Most of the film’s action shows characters club-hopping, drugging and hooking up. It’s certainly a free interpretation, capped by the one live-action sequence, a dialogue-free orgy of torture and executions.
In the closing play of Group A, Rob Kimbro’s capsule Henry V, we get a faithful rendition. The staging is simple, and the five black-clad actors speak the lines capably. Miranda Herbert (as the Chorus) and Sean Patrick Judge (title role) do the best work of the cycle here.
Group B lapses back into goofiness with Melissa Davis’ take on Henry VI, Part 1. The battles are enacted as a football game, with an onstage scoreboard heralding ….The Blokes” vs. ….Ze French” and Elissa Levitt playing Joan of Arc as an American Gladiator contestant.
Rob Shimko’s staging of Henry VI, Part 2 tries to reinstate a relatively straightforward and sincere approach. But the impact remains haphazard, most often achieved by having actors yell key lines.
Wackiness again prevails with Philip Hayes’ take on Henry VI, Part 3. Conflicts are represented by characters throwing stuffed animals or decapitating them. Many figures adopt Li’l Abner-type dialect, while others seem to have wandered in from South Park. Typical bit: A just-slain character, being dragged offstage by his heels, turns to the audience to wave ….bye-bye.”
Amy Hopper’s direction of Richard III seems set to close the cycle on a serious note, as Judge darkly launches into the famous ….winter of our discontent” speech. Then he begins putting on eyeliner, as if preparing to play the master of ceremonies in Cabaret. You know things have veered off course when Judge is reduced to playing Richard by striking Saturday Night Fever poses and Bobby Haworth’s Henry VII delivers his big speech in the voice of a Southern-fried televangelist.
Somewhere in this historical hodgepodge are embedded a few effective moments. But be forewarned. It takes heaps of patience to reach them.
everett.evans@chron.com
.. –> end bodycopy –>
