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  Sunday, 05 April 2009
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I am preparing to perform this role and would welcome all and any ideas or insights into this role. It strikes me as a role that could be straight-forward and complex at the sametime but I am early in my study of it. Thanks in advance for any feedback, ideas and advice.
12 years ago
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#2650
Hi Joe,

My thoughts are that you have to define Henry to suit the context you have for Richard and for the play in general - or rather, develop those three aspects together and from them the rest of the play and the characters flow. He is one of those wonderfully underwritten characters and you never get to learn specifics of what is going through his mind. To my mind he is a immensely challenging supporting role where he must be a strong and clearly defined character in own right, but role in the play is to support the performance of the amazing role of Richard. I note you are both directing and performing the lead role so I'll take it from that you have a firm idea of Richard and from there you will need to decide the Henry that suits. I think there are two polar extremes of Henry you can take. There is the plotter which I have seen more often than not and the one I am least impressed with. This is the role that I ended up playing in the mentioned production and it did go against my instints and initial impression of the role (but the director was a good one and at the end of the day, it's their call). What this role did achieve was to make Richard a real victim, trapped by a re-emergance of the old world order. I think this makes him too innocent however. I much prefer a noble interpretation of Henry. He does not have a down-to-the-bones hatred of Richard, they probably played together as boys, but he knows his place in the system (the system Richard is neglecting and dismanteling) and the actions he must take, firstly to protect his and his families honour and then later, when presented with a crown I do not beleive he returned for (the Percy's though were likely less niaive), what he has to do to be a leader. I beleive when he takes the crown he knows the realities of court are that Richard will be killed-off - he wishes this was not so, but it is and he can't let that stop him from what he sees as the right course of action. I really wish, as did the actor playing Richard, that we could have explored some more touching affection at the disposistion scene. Henry can be cold and ruthless when needed especially to those who threaten his family and those of lessor rank or breeding. This approach makes Richard less of an innocent victim and I believe highlights the maddness of his belief in being not just king but god's appointed. I don't beleive there is much of a middle ground between the two Henry's so I would recommend clearly chose the one that suits what you want to achieve then pursue it cleanly and aggressively. One constant for Henry across the two interpretations is his clear change in nature to those of equal rank and breeding, against those inferior.

Hope this helps - good luck! Be sure to share your learnings after the production for others to also build from.

Rus
12 years ago
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#2651
I appreciate your insight - very much so.
I tend to research a lot of historical productions to give me an idea of what others have thought, or emphasised, and see what I can incorporate into my own production. So a few long delightful days in the Folger's and I discover how this play has transformed over the centuries since it was first produced. A lot of 18th and early 19th century productions didn;t like the sparsity of women, so either added a love interest for Aumerle(!), or actually had the Queen come back near the end and plead with Bullingbrooke to spare Richard's life - and then burst in upon the murder scene to faint away and die in grief at Richard's feet in an interesting tableu...spouting Lear's lines over Cordelia to the lifeless body of Richard as the curatin fell (!)
What I have so far - I am emphasizng some of the metaphor's in the text - notably the role-playing that Richard(always) and Bullingbrook (Ultimately) tend to play. Also - the imagery of the Sun, and mirrors. A lot of the staging will have identical blocking, and even the laughter of the caterpillars at the beginning will be echoed by the laughter of Northumberland and Percy in the scene where the caterpillars are sentenced to death.
An actual mirror will be onstage throughout (a hand mirror) - as this is an outdoor production, the setting is fairly sparse and unchanging - a throne center stage on a slightly raised platform (we perform on a gazebo, and have a set of stage risers on the ground in front of the gazebo, with a staircase leading to a small, thrust platform flush with the front of the gazebo. So there are different playing heights which lend itself very well to the scenes where Richard is on the castle wall while Henry is on the ground.
Anyway - the throne on stage will have a hand mirror which first Richard, then Gaunt, then the Quwwn, then Richard again use to look at themselves while pointing up some of their reflective lines. Of course, the mirror scene later on is pretty essential as to the characterization of Richard. And thinknig at this point that at the end of the play, Henry will be on the throne, unconciously using the mirror on himself...
Also - thought of making Richard and his court very fat and gaudy, and their costumes become less and less ornate as the show progresses (Richard ends up in a dirty "Hamlet shirt" with grey trousers for the prison scene at the end), and Henry and his followers start out very thin and conservatively dressed, and become more ornate and "cloaky" by the end.

For me, I don't yet see sympathy between Henry and Richard. Or rather, for Richard from Henry. I see Richard as very dynamic: hot and cold, peevish and proud, poetic and intelligent, totally unpredictable and a bit of a Dick throughout. Very vain. And ultimately not caring what happens to himself anymore. It's like his whole life, all he ever really cared about was how he looked (hence the mirror), and what people thought of him, and once he no longer cared about that, he may as well die. For me - the key to his character are lines similar to ones spoken by Macbeth (and I think those lines in Macbeth starting with "That which should accompany old age - as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends..." are the key to him) - Richard's key is in the lines "I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends" vey humble, very real, vrey pitiful that he realizes he won't ever be able to be a regular guy after so many years as God's appointed deputy....

So - with a month to go in rehearsals (and the last month is where the actions/reactions really come out of the text - once it's been memorized by all the actors)- right now Richard is unpredictably alternating between loud masculine bravado and soft feminine poetic recitation, while Henry is concentrating on the steady-as-he-goes austere impenetrable demeanor with an occasional flash of the King that will flourish by play's end.

I've also taken a different approach to memorizing the lines this year - I started with the big speeches near the middle and end of the play (Learned the prison soliloquy first), and will be adding the Act 1 and 2 stuff over the next week. Think it will help to know where the character ends up, and play towards that inevitable end, rather than learn the pompous first few scenes and then learn the pathos of 3.3, 4.1, and 5.

Intersting aspect for me as an actor/director (this is the first of 6 shows I've both acted/directed that I've played the lead - what some call a "vanity production" - is that Richard is the most vain character going (Osiric-players not included), so when the other actors get a bit impatient with my never-ending speeches, I kind of think, hell, Richard is amused by all their impatience, and often thinks to himself, "Oh yeah? You think that's long winded, get a load of this !"
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