Those who insist on three-plus hours of Shakespeare may well get their knickers in a twist over the sixty-some minutes chopped from Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott’s excitement-packed Henry V now on show at Pasadena’s A Noise Within. Not this reviewer, who welcomes not just its refreshingly brief two-hours-and-change running time but its multitude of action movie-ready thrills.

 The Elliotts make their intentions clear from the get-go with a dozen and a half black-clad, LED lantern-bearing players entering not just from all corners of ANW’s thrust set but descending on cables from high atop the stage, then launching into the play’s scene-setting prologue, shared among cast members rather than performed as written for a single voice.

No indeed, this will not be Shakespeare For Purists, just one reason why this history play (the Bard genre I’m most likely to skip) held my interest even when its Elizabethan English vocabulary and syntax might at times to have been Greek to my ears.

 Rafael Goldstein stars magnificently as Profligate Prince Hal of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 turned Heroic King Henry V, the early-15th-century monarch who, however briefly, united England and France through love and war.

When a law-bending Archbishop Of Canterbury (Apollo Dukakis) encourages Henry to invade the land then ruled by le roi Charles VI (Frederick Stuart), all it takes is the French ambassador’s gift of a chest filled not with treasure but with tennis balls (an insult if there ever was one) to persuade the young King to rally his troops to battle.

 And battle they do, in sequences so athletic they demand that combatants sport both elbow and knee pads as they ascend and descend steps so steep, they’d challenge even the toughest climber, then execute sword-and-ax combat so fierce, it has Ken Merckx joined by cast members Collin Bressie and Marc Leclerc in fight-choreographing it to adrenaline-fueled life.

Adding to the cinematic fireworks is sound designer Robert Oriol’s pulse-pounding musical underscoring punctuated by Tim Curle’s live onstage percussion.

Not only that, but Oriel sets some of Shakespeare’s text to music performed by a vocally gifted cast in gorgeous acappella harmonies (under Melissa Sky-Eagle’s music direction) and by L.A. musical theater star Cassandra Marie Murphy (French Queen Isabel) in soaring soprano solos.

 Conspicuously missing from this dramatically-charged Henry V is much of the uncut script’s comic relief, though enough remains to allow Kasey Mahaffy (Nym), Jeremy Rabb (Bardolph), Deborah Strang (Mistress Quickly), and Stuart (Pistol) to provide some Cockney-accented laughs, while romcom lovers will delight in an eleventh-hour meet-cute between English-only Henry and a je-ne-parle-pas-anglais Catherine de Valois (Erika Soto, captivating as always).

A dynamite Goldstein (in action hero shape as befits the a warrior king) gets all-around splendid support from a cast that also includes Michael Phillip Thomas, Michael Uribes, Johnathan Wallace, and Stephen Weingartner, who like virtually everyone else play two, three, or more roles, and ensemble members McCall Cadenas, Celina Surniak, and Mollie Wilson, who prove themselves every bit the athletic equal of their male counterparts.

 Scenic designer Frederica Nascimento’s steeper-than-steep upstage steps have multiple wonders in store (thanks in large measure to cast member muscles), Ken Booth’s lighting is both striking and varied, and Angela Balogh Calin’s stark black costumes have their own surprises to reveal, with Sydney Russell’s props and Klint Flowers’s wigs and makeup completing a uniformly stunning production design.

Craig Brauner, Jonathan Bray, Nick Bruno, Brian Joseph, Emily Kosloski. Jane Macfie, Ken Merckx, and Natalie Reiko are understudies.

Anne M. Jude is stage manager and Kayla Hammett is assistant stage manager. Brianna Pattillo is assistant lighting designer. Christine A. Menzies is dialect coach. Scenic painting is by Sets to Go and Catherine Lee.

A Henry V for theatergoers who might balk at hearing every single stanza intact, A Noise Within’s latest grabs you from the get-go and never releases its grasp. I give it two swords up.

A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd, Pasadena.
www.ANoiseWithin.org

–Steven Stanley
March 18, 2018
Photos: Craig Schwartz

Tags: A Noise Within, Los Angeles Theater Review, William Shakespeare