Playwright: William Shakespeare. At: Oak Park Festival Theatre at Austin Gardens, 150 Forest Ave., Oak Park. Phone: 708-445-4440;$25. Runs through: Aug. 20
In a season teeming with Shakespeare plays focusing on family conflicts, the Oak Park Festival Theatre has chosen for its 2011 outdoor slate dramas dealing almost wholly with questions of leadership in times of war. Henry IV, presented earlier this summer, traced the education of a young prince preparing to shoulder the responsibilities of reigning over a kingdom. Henry V shows us the now fully-empowered monarch, his boyish pastimes abandoned, struggling to do the right thing by the nation he is destined to rule.
It's a lonely job. Corrupt religious officials lure Henry into waging war with France in order to distract him from domestic matters (notably, their own overdue taxes). The youth who once caroused in the taverns with thieves and con artists is not content to oversee his sanguine business from the safety of a fortified castle, however, instead observing his armies' progress on the very battlefields where they fight and die. This doesn't spare his former drinking buddy, caught looting an enemy church, from execution, nor does another ex-comrade-turned-mercenary escape punishment for his ransoming of wealthy prisoners. Indeed, nearly every moment serves to remind us that the knotty moral problems generated by martial expediency tend to remain constant throughout history.
One of these paradoxical precepts is that the same soldier can emerge both heroic and ignoble as a result of his actions. Shakespeare's panoramic view of his subject, therefore, requires actors to play each character as several charactersin one scene, Henry is the inquiring CO infiltrating the ranks incognito to solicit the opinions of his subordinates. In another, he is the charismatic commander rallying the troops with his eloquence, and in a third, he is the clumsy suitor struggling with language barriers as he courts his intended bride in a marriage of diplomacy. Other personae are likewise rife with the contradictions of mortals operating under stress.
Special praise, then, is due Dennis Grimes, continuing his portrayal of Henry, and a hard-working cast including Jack Hickey as the sturdy Fluellen, Aaron Christensen as the opportunistic Pistol and 11-year-old Miranda F. Theis as a bilingual aide-de-camp. Despite some GI humora running gag has a weary Fluellen repeatedly interrupted at his dinnerand several thrilling full-cast running charges, what we take away is a lesson in the proper way to conduct a war, insofar as international bloodshed can ever be accomplished in a seemly manner.