University Times

“Any director worth his or her salt knows putting together a production of Shakespeare is not telling a story, not even the story, but it’s looking for what are the stories, the possibilities of interpretation, the multiple voices, the decisions, which lead to how we are to engage an audience,” said Kevin Ewert.

Ewert’s new book, “The Shakespeare Handbooks: Henry V,” joins a series of critical discussions of William Shakespeare’s frequently performed and studied plays published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Ewert, associate professor of theatre at the Bradford campus, said a former professor and friend at the University of Toronto recommended him to the series’ general editor, John Russell Brown.

“John Russell Brown was looking for a fresh perspective based on an interest in performance, which is exactly where I’m coming from,” said Ewert, who teaches “Introduction to Theatre,” “Play Analysis,” “Movement and Stage Combat,” “Basic Acting,” “Advanced Acting” and “Shakespearean Performances.” He also directs Pitt-Bradford student productions.

As the general preface of the handbook states, “The commentaries, which are [the] core feature, enable a reader to envisage the words of a text unfurling in performance, involving actions and meanings not readily perceived except in rehearsal or performance.”

Ewert said, “At my friend’s recommendation, [Brown] got a hold of me to do one of the handbooks. Although all of the handbooks have the same table of contents, he stressed that the authors were not writing to some template, but to have our own perspectives and approaches. I greatly appreciated that freedom.”

But why choose “Henry V,” as opposed to its more famous “pre-quels” involving King Henry’s days as Prince Hal (“Henry IV, Part I” and “Henry IV, Part II”), or another play?

“I had done some writing on ‘Henry V,’ so I was building on prior commentary,” Ewert explained in a phone conversation from Durham, N.C., where he is on sabbatical directing Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman” at the Manbites Dog Theatre.

“Also, John Russell Brown wanted me to write on a play that I hadn’t directed, believing that that would be actually a detriment to a critical commentary because of an established focus rather than examining: What are the possibilities?” said Ewert, who was an artistic associate and company director for Pittsburgh’s Unseam’d Shakespeare Co. from 1997 to 2003.

Like others in the series, Ewert’s handbook contains discussions of the surviving texts, which vary quite a bit for this play, and accounts of early performances; the play’s sources and cultural context; key productions and performances; film versions, such as Laurence Olivier’s 1944 movie and Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 version, and critical assessments. The handbook also recommends additional readings that shed light on the play.

The principal feature of Ewert’s handbook — relatively rare for Shakespearean criticism — is a scene by scene, sometimes line by line commentary focusing on the decisions actors and directors particularly must make in creating a full-blown, consistent and sensible production for a modern audience.

“I also wanted to focus on the audience’s standpoint, to ask how does an audience absorb this stuff,” Ewert added.

While the historical Henry V died nearly 200 years before Shakespeare wrote his play, there is reason to believe that the Elizabethan audience would be familiar with the history because Henry was famous as a king with great success against perennial bitter enemy France. In addition, the popular Henry IV plays, featuring the lovable Falstaff and cohorts as Prince Hal’s pals, were fresh in the minds of theatre-goers.

“So, that audience was not going to see the play to learn who won the Battle of Agincourt,” Ewert said. “They were going to find out how Shakespeare was going to tell this king’s story. That’s not so different from a modern approach. But the questions are, and we don’t know the answers, how did that audience view Henry? Is he a heroic figure, a source of pride that recalled a ‘golden age,’ or was the audience sick of war in their own time, and this King recalled instead a military attitude and the destruction and disease of war?”

Resolving that issue makes a difference for whether the “space” of the play should be grand and opulent — in other words, representing the establishment — or down and dirty, reflecting a bitter and cynical war-weary society.

It’s those sorts of decisions that Ewert guides his readers through in “Henry V.”

As for more modern cultural contexts, Ewert pointed out that Olivier’s film was shot during the Blitzkrieg between 1943 and 1944 and was dedicated to the “Commandos and Airborne Troops of Great Britain, the spirit of whose ancestors it humbly attempted to recapture.”

“With a context this important,” Ewert writes, “and a mission so clear and deeply felt by the director and star, it’s no surprise that the message and meaning of the story would also be clear: The storytelling is heroic, stirring, patriotic, straightforward. Anything not easily played that way is cut.”

By contrast, Branagh’s motto in preparing for making his 1989 film was “Do not judge this man, place him in context — understand.”

Ewert writes, “This is sound practice for an actor — you have to live in your character, in his actions, and you’re going to have a tough time playing those actions if you yourself have already judged them.”

However, Ewert continues, a director, especially of film, has power and control over the story and inevitably shapes the action and guides or manipulates the audience’s emotional responses. “Because Branagh the director has so much control over that context in which Branagh the actor places his Henry, it’s a significant but simple step to go from understanding the character to putting the audience in his shoes — and making sure everybody watching likes him,” he wrote.

Ewert said that a prime premise to performing Shakespeare should be the admission that, due to the evolution of language since the early 17th century, “he is not directly accessible to any of us, and a British accent doesn’t change that.” The vocabulary and syntax are unfamiliar to all moderns, he said.

The actor’s task is to take the text and “open it up, see what’s inside, ask, ‘How can I make anything of this?’ When you’re conducting a rehearsal there is no set way to get there without examining what the possibilities are. The actor also has to learn how to control the text using solid vocal technique to deliver a full thought, at different times sophisticated, huge, emotionally charged, outrageous, that may carry over three, four, five lines of verse,” Ewert said.

Many productions of Shakespeare fail by focusing too much on the title character at the expense of other legitimate voices, he said. “In ‘Hamlet,’ for example, it’s easy to take Hamlet’s word for everything,” Ewert said. “It’s easy to get sucked into being on Hamlet’s side. But what if he’s not right about everything?”

Allowing other characters to flourish and gather the audience’s attention lends tension to the play that might be overlooked otherwise, he added.

“The same is true of Henry. In Olivier’s version, the other characters are not very memorable. I can’t think of a good performance by any of them. But Branagh’s version is much more an ensemble piece, and as a result of the other voices you get some discontinuity, even contradiction. I think that’s healthy.”

—Peter Hart