Henry IV NYC Reviews and Tickets

"Some of the opening beats are muddled and even those familiar with the play might have initial difficulty sorting out the characters and the story. The play does eventually acquire more persuasive force, but frustratingly it keeps breaking its own rules…All this fudging seems to point to a problem with the framing structure and the way it may impede rather than excite the storytelling. There’s a lot of invention here and a lot of movement, though not ultimately much emotional power."
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"Strong performances and clever touches abound, making it a worthy if not revelatory experience…Much of the cast is excellent…Women barely figure here, so padding a scene to target one of the few female characters and have it sting doesn't really make sense to me. It certainly doesn't illuminate this play…Yet it's the finale that really falls flat. Still, the ensemble! The inventive staging! And the King! Walter holds our attention with ease."
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"Director Phyllida Lloyd used a similar framing for 2013's 'Julius Caesar' also at St. Ann's, but it is less successful here. It is not always clear when the prisoners are being prisoners and when they are playing Shakespeare…Harriet Walter is sleekly powerful as both Henry the Fourth and a prison kingpin...The show runs a fairly quick two-and-a-half hours with no intermission and the trimming gives quite a different spin to the play."
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"The historical personalities are obscure now, but the conflicts are not: fights for money, power, and respect. Given this pressure-cooker atmosphere, English director Phyllida Lloyd's decision to stage her radically slimmed-down 'Henry IV' in a women's prison makes sense...Call it Orange Is the New Bard. The play's brutal politics are at home there — one of the few surviving pockets of violent honor culture. And watching an all-female cast embody hormonal machismo exposes the dangerous peacocking and presents it for critique."
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"Once the play starts, the cavils for the most part fall away. There’s an exhilaration that comes with watching a gifted cast of women tear into the male preserve of these texts. It’s telling that director Phyllida Lloyd has in both instances chosen plays with notably few female parts so that the gender reassignment is doubly repaid."
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"It’s an insightful approach, with plenty of layers to gnaw through, and a setting that demands — and gets — gutsy performances. But there’s something presumptuous about speculating what women prisoners might make of Shakespeare, then speaking on their behalf...It doesn’t all cohere — class, in particular, is raised and forgotten — and it never feels totally authentic in its prison setting, but Lloyd’s production is never, ever dull."
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"I found this production of 'Henry IV' better than the 'Julius Caesar' which was so acclaimed in New York and London. Maybe we now know what to expect in the context of a women's prison and so many of the roles are played in excellent fashion...This 'Henry IV' is a triumph for the women!"
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"This is, let’s be clear, an inventive and exciting production, but I couldn’t help feel that it tries to explain itself too much, to find ways of accounting for the fact that all these women are together on stage, instead of just revelling in it – because it is a thing worth revelling in...Part of me just wishes they didn’t feel the need to justify and contextualise the casting in this way – because, regardless of setting, the cast are amazing."
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