E-Mail This Article to a Friend Rites of succession Trinity Rep unleashes the Henriad BY CAROLYN CLAY
	The Henriad By William Shakespeare. Richard II, directed by Kevin Moriarty. Henry IV, directed by Amanda Dehnert. Henry V, directed by Oskar Eustis. Set by Michael McGarty. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by John Ambrosone. Sound by Peter Sasha Hurowitz. Fight choreography by Craig Handel. With Brian McEleney, Timothy Crowe, Stephen Thorne, Fred Sullivan Jr., Angela Brazil, Anne Scurria, Rachael Warren, Barbara Meek, David Hanbury, Noah Brody, Joanna Cole, Ben Steinfeld, Drew Battles, William Damkoehler, Mauro Hantman, and Miriam Silverman. At Trinity Repertory Company through December 19.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," and in Shakespeare’s Henriad, the troubled noggin is a Hydra-headed thing. The second and better written (though, time-wise, earlier) of the Bard’s tetralogies, the cycle encompasses Richard II, Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, and Henry V and English history from 1398 to 1420. In perhaps its most ambitious undertaking ever, Trinity Repertory Company presents the works in three-production repertory (the two parts of Henry IV having been conflated), in what artistic director Oskar Eustis asserts is only the second such outing in America. In discussion for five years, its evolving meditation on leadership timed to this bitter election year, the Henriad is certainly an event — a rare opportunity to experience the sweep of the poetic, murderous, faith-driven national soap opera that is Shakespeare’s histories. And at Trinity, where three different directors sit and spur the plays, it’s the galloping ensemble of actors that holds its own reins. There are times in Henry IV when you want to cry, "Whoa." But by and large, this is a thunderous eight-and-a-half-hour relay ride you don’t want to miss.

Performed by a scrappy company that runs the gamut from 35-year Trinity vets to third-year acting students in the Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium, many of them in half a dozen roles, the epic unfolds in the theater’s smaller and more intimate space — stripped down to blotchy brick and concrete — on a thrust stage of erupting boards one might term "this wooden trapezoid," with several rough staircases leading to an overhead bridge. Between the stage and three doors in the back wall is a pit into which, in fits of temper and some bruising if stylized combat, chairs and bodies are lobbed. At the human heart of the plays are deposed King Richard’s painful journey from profligate demigod to introspective human being and Henry V’s climb from Falstaff’s tavern to his father’s shoes. But taken together, the plays — and these productions, rife with religious, literary, and musical allusion — make clear the evolution of the English monarchy, in relation to its citizenry, from so-called divine right to ostensibly God-guided nation building.

One might expect, given the Biblical underpinnings, that the first would be last. But though each of these brimming productions has much to recommend it, Kevin Moriarty’s staging of the lyrical Richard II, here set around a subterranean pool of blood bridged by a rugged wooden cross, is the most affecting. Amanda Dehnert makes a roistering barnstorm of Henry IV, cutting much of Part 2 (Justice Shallow goodbye) and having the entire company on stage driving the action via barked Brechtian placards, even sitting to enjoy the vigorous proceedings. This production’s recurring musical motif, which connects it to both Richard II and Henry V, is an a cappella hymn setting of William Blake’s "And did those feet in ancient time" (from the preface to Milton), which concludes, "I will not cease from mental fight,/Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,/Till we have built Jerusalem/In England’s green and pleasant land." Eustis lays on a cooler hand, offering a pointed modern-dress rendering of Henry V in which a sincere, if questionably counseled, Harry memorably rallies his troops to a dubiously justified war he believes God has ordained. Although the director doesn’t wholly dim the magic of "A little touch of Harry in the night," Eustis, viewing the play in the damning shadow of Iraq rather than in the patriotic blaze of World War II, sees Henry V differently from the way Olivier did.

No one who saw director Moriarty’s brilliantly freewheeling contemporary adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor will be surprised to hear he takes a few liberties with Richard II, telescoping the quarrel between Thomas Mowbray and Henry Bolingbroke that leads to the banishment of both and bringing on stage the corpse of the murdered Gloucester to make it clear that Richard directed his uncle’s demise. He allows Anne Scurria’s moribund John of Gaunt, sinking to his knees, to belabor the play’s most famous speech not spoken by the king, the rapturous yet cautionary "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle . . . "