‘Henry IV' Review: Two Plays Become One

New York Times

12-02-2025

A young prince and an old knight walk into a tavern …
So much of Shakespeare's 'Henry IV' plays like a setup, either to a joke or to a significant turning point in English history. It's perhaps the most defining, and trickiest, element of the Henry plays, which often combine the interpersonal high jinks of a comedy with the politics and knavery of a war drama, sans the typical dramatic structure.
In a new production from the Theater for a New Audience, the two 'Henry IV' plays are combined into a single adaptation that clocks in at nearly four hours. The script, by Dakin Matthews, condenses and restructures the material, while the direction by Eric Tucker opts for a more classic, toned-down staging. For all the successful work this 'Henry IV' does to combat the unwieldy bloat of the two history plays together, it does not probe the central characters enough to uphold the stakes and maintain the tension throughout the lengthy running time. The result is a serviceable production that lacks fresh revelations.
The 'Henry IV' plays are part of the Henriad, the series of history plays that begin with 'Richard II' and end with 'Henry V.' Often considered the less glamorous section of Shakespeare's oeuvre, the plays are about the making and unmaking of kings, the burdens of the crown, revolts, betrayals and the disastrous clashing of many male egos.
At the start of 'Henry IV,' Henry Bolingbroke (played by Matthews) has usurped the crown with the help of the Percys, a family of English lords who now lead a rebellion against Bolingbroke for that same crown they helped him procure. Meanwhile, Bolingbroke's son, Prince Hal (Elijah Jones), fetters away his time drinking and palling around with the crooked old knight John Falstaff (Jay O. Sanders) and his reprehensible cohort. Hal and Falstaff's trivial pursuits are interrupted, however, when they're called to the battlefield, and by the end of 'Henry IV,' Hal has renounced his old habits, brutally rebuffed Falstaff and taken his place on the throne as King Henry V.
The relationship between Hal and Falstaff, a favorite of lit majors and Shakespeare scholars, is the true heart of the material. The young prince and the old knight are like father and son, mentor and mentee, but also serve as each other's foils. They represent opposite sides of age and privilege, and their gradual dynamic shift reveals the nuances of their characters. For all his comedic purpose in the story, Falstaff emerges as a tragic figure — the niggling sideshow act in a grander story about nobility and a nation's evolution. He's the sacrificial lamb to Prince Hal's ascension.
Each of the three acts ends with a major scene between Hal and Falstaff, marking another dramatic crux in their story. One of the production's strengths is how Matthews cleverly structures the script to steadily follow the arc of these two characters. However, the same nuance and decisiveness is less present in the direction and some of the performances.
Jones, who played an older version of Hal in the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's recent 2024 production of 'Henry V,' offers a performance that feels unintentionally laced with ambivalence. How much is Hal inclined toward the frivolity of Falstaff and his buddies from the London underground and how much toward the throne? At what lines, in what moments does he decide to step into the role of Henry V not just in title but in attitude? These subtleties aren't always signaled by the performance.
Similar is true for stage stalwart Sanders, whose wincing, slovenly Falstaff unsteadily teeter-totters across and around the stage, the butt of a colorful array of Shakespearean fat jokes. This Falstaff is a vain, boisterous clown, but not much else; Sanders's performance doesn't touch on Falstaff's underlying somberness until the end. The version of Falstaff as the sad philosophizing old man is almost completely subsumed by Falstaff the degenerate clown.
Tucker, who is also the co-founder and artistic director of the innovative Off Broadway theater company Bedlam, has staged this production in the round, on a small platform stage, in a surprisingly minimalist style. There's a dry matter-of-factness to this aesthetic choice: the actors enter and exit among the audience, sometimes taking seats next to audience members along the aisles, and the music and wardrobe changes are all set up within view, along the perimeters of the Scripps Mainstage at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center.
This 'Henry IV' also sticks roughly to the style and fashion of the time in which it was written. The costume design, by AC Gottlieb and Catherine Zuber, is full of layered cloaks and robes, with subtle variations of textures and patterns so even the mute black and browns — occasionally interrupted by a splash of carmine for the royals — are treated with some dimension. The lighting design, by Nicole E. Lang, often draws too much attention to itself; the harsh overhead fluorescents in the early scenes give the production a distant, clinical feel.
That isn't the only place where the production feels distant. Overall, it's worth applauding the cast, most of whom, with the exception of Sanders and Jones, play between two and six separate roles. And yet some of the monologuing, as with Matthews's Bolingbroke and Jones's Hal, comes across as more showy and performative than intimate and naturalistic, despite the production's attempt to draw the audience in closer through its cozier staging.
There are, however, some cast members who connect more effortlessly with the audience and the text. Jordan Bellow makes a meal of his role as Hal's friend Poins, imbuing the lines with playful character and Poins's postures and movements with a comedic waywardness. James Udom handily switches between the proud, hot-tempered Henry 'Hotspur' Percy, with his puffed out chest and long, confident stride, and Pistol, a slouching soldier from Falstaff's cohort. Steven Epp is likewise charming in all respects, whether as the wry-tongued and dry-humored Worcester or the bumbling tavern waiter Francis.
Over the long run time (which includes two intermissions), we see a young prince and an old knight walk into a tavern together, march on a battlefield together, trade jabs and muse on their futures. But when the prince transitions into a king and that old knight becomes irrelevant — what then? The punchlines in 'Henry IV' are as much about laughs as they are about losses. The ending must find its players, and hopefully the audience, irrevocably changed.