Recently, William and Mary’s very own Shakespeare company, known as Shakespeare in the Dark or SitD, put on a production of one of the Bard’s most popular histories, Henry IV Part 1. However, if you go in expecting a typical tale of men exercising their wit and their strength on the battlefields of fifteenth century England, you’ll be in for a bit of a surprise. The members of SitD chose to make a number of changes to the classic play. As might be immediately apparent from the posters you’ve seen floating around campus, the setting has been modernized. SitD’s version takes place in the 1970s or 1980s in order to accommodate another creative twist: making it punk. In the original play, Prince Henry, or Hal as he is known to his friends, is a rebellious youth who spends his time around drunkards and thieves. In SitD’s version, Hal hangs around a gang of punks sporting dyed hair and leather jackets. But the biggest changes were gender-swapping the main characters and adding a feminist tinge to the story.
Co-directors, Bruno Del Alamo and Zach Hurst, got the idea after realizing how many talented women are in SitD and how few strong female roles there are in Shakespeare to cast them in. When asked about his vision, Bruno said, “The goal of our Henry IV was to bring those people to the front.” In order to accomplish this, the title character King Henry IV was changed to Queen Henry, played by Catherine Strycharz. The miscreant heir apparent, Prince Hal, is now Princess Hal, played by Isabel Steven. Several other characters were played by female actresses but kept their male titles and pronouns for the sake of preserving the meter and the authenticity of the script.
Photo Credit: Archer Brinkley
Bruno also mentioned that SitD’s previous Shakespeare adaptation, Comedy of Errors, presents some very negative portrayals of women. While these ideologies may have been characteristic of Shakespeare’s time, they are not necessarily something that needs to be perpetuated in modern productions. Bruno explains that his goal was “to take a dated show and make something positive out of it.”
To this end, the directors chose to present a play that features a woman in the main position of power as Henry IV, and another woman in the dynamic and complex role of Hal. The production was given a more overtly feminist overtone by clearly designating the antagonist, Hotspur, as misogynistic and anti-feminist. To help with the delivery of this message, the directors took on Rachel Kilgore as a feminist consultant for the play. As feminist consultant, Rachel’s role was to be on hand at rehearsals to address questions and pick out anything that did not fit with the feminist message. Rachel says her motivation for this project was the need for more representation of women, not just in Shakespeare, but in media in general—both past and present.
Honora Overby, who played the characters Gadshill and Veron in the production, discussed how the feminist spin was especially appropriate for this particular play: “The entire play is so gendered—the themes of war, strength, and honor—that it’s utterly refreshing to see those ideas discussed in a non-masculine context and think about what those ideas mean for people of different genders.” Honora also appreciated the way in which the choice to gender-swap affected the relationships between characters. Instead of seeing honor and duty discussed in terms of a father-son relationship, we get to explore the mother-daughter relationship between Queen Henry and Princess Hal. Their moments of heartbreaking disconnect and eventual reconciliation were some of the most moving scenes of the play. Overall, the feminist twist and female leads made this a very unique and thought-provoking production of Henry IV.