Classical Gas

Henry VIII in NoHo

By Steven Leigh Morris

Sean Faye and Dawn Alden (Photo by Lucia Towers)

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I admit to a certain trepidation about risking the time on a three-hour production of a little-known Elizabethan history play, particularly if, say, the actors don’t know their way around the challenging language or the style.

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Confession: In all my years of reviewing theater, this is the first production I’ve ever seen of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII originally titled All is True, co-written (somebody thinks, who knows?) with Shakespeare’s peer, John Fletcher. It’s the last history play penned or co-penned by the Bard, and it’s a bit of a mess, structurally, which is likely the reason it’s staged so rarely.

The play contrasts reckless and relentless ambition with the brand of conscience that embodies compassion. In this it echoes the same themes lodged within Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Richard III, Henry V and As You Like It.

In the latter, the Duke Senior reports to his “brothers in exile” from the isolated forest: Hath not old custom made this life more sweet than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods more free from peril than the envious court?”

The structure of Henry VIII aside, if these aren’t themes singularly pertinent to our splintering nation in our corner of the 21^st century, I don’t what are.

In defending himself against the rogue’s gallery near play’s end, Henry’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, expresses the oft-repeated sentiment that embodies the play’s heart: “Men that make envy and crooked nourishment dare bite the best.”

Porters of Hellsgate stages the play in a modern dress, remedial yet powerful fashion in one of the small theaters of the Whitmore Lindley Theatre Center in North Hollywood. Director Will Block’s set contains white silky drapes hanging from the sky around a single throne.

I admit to a certain trepidation about risking the time on a three-hour production of a little-known Elizabethan history play, particularly if, say, the actors don’t know their way around the challenging language or the style.

The prologue is delivered by Brittany Pirozzoli (who also plays Cranmer). After hearing her first lines, and watching her comportment, my anxiety subsided a bit with the underlying faith that, maybe, just maybe, these people know what they are doing.  That faith was reinforced when Pirozzoli was accompanied on the stage by the ensemble’s 14 other actors. Their rendition of Shakespeare did more than make sense, it slowly tightened an emotional and intellectual grip on the play, and on its significance to our times.    

The play is part blistering social satire, part a descendant of Medea (the domestic story of an aging, faithful wife spurned by her husband-king after he falls in love with a younger woman) and an antecedent of Tartuffe.

In this case, the aging king and queen are Henry VIII (Jesse James Thomas ) and Katherine of Aragon (Dawn Alden), who endured stillborn sons by her husband (a curse, he determined) and has been de-throned by him because of his new intoxication with her younger replacement, Anne Boleyn (Anusha Shankar).

The Tartuffe part evolves from the character of Cardinal Wolsey (Thomas Bigley, with a strikingly effective gravitas), with whom the king is smitten for his “loyalty.” (Thomas plays  Henry as a nimble-witted and nimble-footed man-child). Meanwhile, the cardinal is secretly plotting against the king (and his wishes to divorce Katherine) in order to feather his options for becoming Pope.

Thomas Bigley and Jesse James Thomas as the cardinal and his king. (Photo by Lucia Towers)

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There’s some comfort that in a tiny theater in North Hollywood, Porters of Hellsgate is able to put on stage 15 actors who are obviously trained in the art, to reincarnate a play that’s almost never done, in a way that resonates in our times with a kind of weird, emotional buzz.

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There’s also a soliloquy by Cranmer which spouts the coming glories of Anne’s newborn daughter, Elizabeth, who will become Queen Elizabeth I, and Shakespeare’s patron. It’s an antecedent to Tartuffe’s speech by a messenger proclaiming the wisdom, virtue and justice of French King Louis XIV, who just happened to be Molière’s patron. These playwrights know where their bread is buttered.    

Swirling around all these power centers are the kind of sycophants and turncoats who traffic in cruelty, with gleeful ambition being their toxic fuel. The play is a cry for empathy, mercy and modesty – qualities it could be argued we see slowly evaporating in our body politic.

Block’s production underscores this plea in a moving visual tableau, a kind of dream sequence, in which the new Queen Anne ritualistically returns the crown from her head to the now threadbare Katherine.

Wolsey is a thoughtful figure. Upon his treasonous correspondences with the Vatican being discovered, he ruminates in one of the play’s simplest yet most poignant reflections — call it the sycophant’s lament:

“A long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth the tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms and bears his blushing honors thick upon him; the third day comes a frost, a killing frost, and when he thinks, good easy man full surely his greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, and then falls, as I do. . . Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate you. I feel my heart new opened. O, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes’ favors!”   

David Charry adds some strategically crude cinematography, breaking-news broadcasts that dissolve into static. The device is partly effective and partly a trope.

My growing frustration with American theater is the number of plays put on by our institutional theaters that are so obviously following what they perceive to be commercial tastes, rather than pursuing a line of inquiry and authenticity. The unwitting consequence is an art form, at least here, that’s growing increasingly irrelevant, a kind of echo chamber of diversion from truths that really matter to us in the here and now. This brand of self-satisfied irrelevance feeds upon itself, and drains blood from the theater’s higher purposes.

There’s some comfort that in a tiny theater in North Hollywood, on what’s obviously a meager budget, Porters of Hellsgate is able to defy all of these tendencies, to put on stage 15 actors who are obviously trained in the art, to reincarnate a play that’s almost never done, in a way that resonates in our times with a kind of weird, emotional buzz.

I’m so glad I took the risk of spending my time with them, and so grateful that this theater company is here.

Porters of Hellsgate at the Whitmore Lindley Theatre Center, 11006 Magnolia Blvd. North Hollywood; in rep; through Dec. 5. https://brownpapertickets.com/event/5587541, Running time three hours with one intermission