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Richard II shows us a rightful but incompetent king. The two Henry IV plays give us an efficient ruler who usurped the throne. Only in Henry V are legitimacy and lustrous leadership combined in one man. Last summer, the American Shakespeare Theater's new artistic director, Peter Coe, chose Henry V to inaugurate his tenure and was lucky enough to enlist the formidable Christropher Plummer for the title role. Coe is kicking off this season with the second play in the sequence, which the AST has not offered for 20 years...
...late Kenneth Tynan, as dazzling a critic as recent years have seen, came to believe that "the two parts of Henry IV are the twin summits of Shakespeare's achievement. Line-hungry actors have led us always to the tragedies, where a single soul is spotlit and its agony explored; but these private torments dwindle beside the Henries, great public plays in which a whole nation is under scrutiny and on trial...
...IV: A ROOM...
...racing circles has it that a Thoroughbred will always return to its best form. The Royal Shakespeare Company is certainly a Thoroughbred. After a stumbling start with Henry IV, the R.S.C. returns to top form at its new home, the Barbican Theater, by making the rarely performed All's Well That Ends Well an evening of enchantment...
...Henry IV, Part 1, has one huge epicenter, that Santa Claus of roguery, Sir John Falstaff. The old knight is as nimble of wit as his belly is full of sack, a braggart, a liar, a thief, a cynic and a coward, but with all that an irresistibly endearing tub of bubbling jollity. Early on, Falstaff (Joss Ackland) chides the heir apparent Prince Hal (Gerard Murphy), who has made the Boar's Head Tavern his home away from the castle, for leading him into evil ways...